


In the Shadow of the Empire

by vellaphoria



Series: Those Who Drown [1]
Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Star Wars Setting, Angst and Humor, Dubious Consent Due To Identity Issues, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-13
Updated: 2020-11-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 05:28:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 32,940
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27339436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/vellaphoria/pseuds/vellaphoria
Summary: It was supposed to be a salvage mission. A slightly more complicated salvage mission than usual, but still. Salvage.Of course, it ends up being so much more than that.
Relationships: Dick Grayson/Jason Todd, Implied Stephanie Brown/Cassandra Cain, Tim Drake/Dick Grayson, Tim Drake/Jason Todd, pre Tim Drake/Dick Grayson/Jason Todd
Series: Those Who Drown [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1996333
Comments: 16
Kudos: 93
Collections: DCU Big Bang 2020





	1. Never Tell Me the Odds

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to begin with an absolutely _huge_ shoutout to [chibi_nightowl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/chibi_nightowl/pseuds/chibi_nightowl) and her amazing beta work on this fic! From content and flow to grammar and word choice, her suggestions were both invaluable and greatly appreciated. Once again, thank you so much!!

The crash was loud enough that Dick could hear it from the other side of the ship. Yelling followed it, quickly escalating to a volume that made something throb in the back of his head.

“Sorry about them,” he sighed, burying his head in his hands.

“I suspect that means we’re at the end of this call,” Oracle said. The nuances of her enunciation were lost in static, but that was the drawback of a quadruple-encrypted holonet connection. If he hadn’t known her back in the old days, he might have missed the fond frustration in her voice. 

“You just say that because you’re not the one who has to deal with them once the call’s over.”

“Maybe,” she said. “Or maybe I’m planning to stay on the line just so I can watch you try to break up whatever they’re fighting about. A woman’s gotta have fun somehow.”

“I hate you.”

“Hate is the way of the dark side, my young Padawan,” Oracle laughed. 

For just a moment, Dick closed his eyes. He acknowledged the hot burn in the back of his throat before letting it pass, releasing it into the Force. 

When he finally spoke, he’d more or less managed to bring his voice back to its normal cheerful timbre. “You were knighted _literally_ one month before me,” he grumbled.

“Which makes me your elder. Now go and deal with the younglings you’ve taken to herding around.” 

“Yes, General,” Dick said, loosely saluting.

“And don’t forget those coordinates” she interrupted, cutting him off before he could disconnect. “I’m sending a list of things we could use, if you’re heading out that way.”

“I’ll ask the crew, but no promises. Money’s been tight lately.”

“When isn’t it?” Oracle asked. “But if it helps, this is a job that’ll actually pay well, if you do it right.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Dick said, flatly. “I’ll let them know the details.”

Oracle nodded. “Just don’t wait too long. My contact says it’s time-sensitive. And Dick? May the Force be with you.”

“And with you,” Dick responded before ending the transmission. He waited until he was absolutely sure that Barabra wasn’t still there before letting his head hang and giving himself the space of ten breaths to calm down. 

Nine years, and those words still cut him to the bone.

Dick pushed himself up from his desk, picking up his datapad and stretching until his back popped. He groaned, silently bemoaning that the state of the universe was such that he had to spend too long traveling in a too small, too loud ship. He had never been the most exemplary member of the Order when it came to routine katas and meditation, but being cooped up still chafed at him. He stifled a bit of a laugh, thinking it probably would have driven Tim crazy…

His hand drifted beneath his jacket, fingers tracing the seam of the hidden pocket that he’d sewn into the lining. 

The distant sound of shouting echoed through the ship. He pulled his hand away quickly, even though there was no one who could have seen his moment of weakness.

Ten more breaths, and he headed to his room’s door.

The sound of shouting led him to the ship’s kitchen where he arrived just in time to see Jason kick an empty crate across the cramped room, narrowly missing Steph. 

Dick stepped back from the doorway, sinking into the shadows and closing his eyes. 

“Well, what do you want _me_ to do about it?” Jason yelled, his voice echoing in the hall. 

“Oh, I don’t know,” Steph said, words dripping with venom. “Maybe find us a job that _makes us some fucking money for once?”_

“Because there are _tons_ of those around.” Another clatter of wood against metal. “I’d like to see _you_ do better.”

“Fine! Then _I_ say we take that job on Corellia. We’re not gonna see better pay and you know it.”

“If you think I’m gonna bring this ship _anywhere_ near the Core Systems, you’re outta your damn mind. Do you _want_ to bring the Empire down on us?”

“ _Fuck_ no,” Steph spat “What I _want_ is to eat something that isn’t a fucking ration kit _sometime_ this month.”

The Force humed with energy, threaded through with the anger and frustration seeping out of the kitchen. It tugged at the edges of his clothes, urging him on. Instead, Dick sighed, sagging back against the wall as he let it hold his weight. 

The fighting hadn’t been this bad since that first tense year after the Republic’s fall. Back then, their anger had been fueled by fear and uncertainty. But these days, both were overshadowed by a sense of deep hopelessness that had them at each other's throats and turned the Force cold with its passing. 

Another ten breaths and he forced his mouth into a smile, set his feet to moving, and stepped into the harsh light of the kitchen.

Just as Jason was stepping out of it.

A wider doorway might have prevented the collision. As it was, it ended with Jason and Dick both standing facing each other in a doorway too narrow for one person, let alone two. Jason inhaled sharply, and they were close enough that his chest just barely brushed against Dick’s.

“Um…” Dick said. “Hi.” 

Jason opened his mouth as if to say something before snapping it back closed. His eyes slid sideways, avoiding Dick’s stare. Without a word, he extricated himself from the doorway and slunk off in the direction of the crew quarters.

Dick blinked a couple of times before stepping fully into the room. He moved to grab the crate that Jason had kicked and re-shelved it with the rest of the empty crates behind Steph. 

She didn’t respond other than to close her eyes and sigh as she leaned back against the counter. “How much of that did you hear?” she asked.

“Not much,” Dick said. “I just got here.”

“You’re still a bad liar,” Steph mumbled, though her tone was fond. “So, what’s the next hopelessly underpaid courier job we’re doing for the illustrious Rebellion?”

“Steph - ”

“Don’t,” she cut him off. “Don’t start. I know how invested you and Jason are in this. And I agree, it’s important. But so is taking the occasional break from only eating food that doesn’t have to be reconstituted. Which, I shouldn’t have to remind you, is about all we can afford on the Rebellion’s salary.” She glanced over at the empty boxes that had at one point been full of rations packets. “And not much of it either, for that matter.”

Dick leaned on the counter next to her. “It’s not quite as bad as all that.”

“Oh?” Steph raised an eyebrow. “Care to enlighten me?”

“The next job they have for us is… uh, risker than most. There’s a bigger payout to compensate for it too.”

“Where’d your contact find the money for _that?_ ”

“They didn’t. Not exactly.” Dick crosses his arms, looking up at the ceiling. “It’s a salvage run. The Rebellion tracked down an old Imperial dumping ground from just after the war.”

“Imps _and_ scavenging?” Steph asked. “Sounds fun… and ballsy.”

“My contact says there’s a good chance it’ll be clear. The site is old, the scavengers have probably picked it clean by now. The Imps only send a patrol through about once a galactic standard week, and the last one was two days ago.”

“Sure,” Steph said. “But if the vultures already got to it, what’s the point?”

“The Rebellion has their sources. They’ve managed to get their hands on the codes for one of the derelict ships. My contact says the security should have been tight enough that the average group of scavengers wouldn’t have gotten into the guts of the thing.”

“So, salvage. And the Rebellion’s gonna pay us for it?”

“Er… not quite.” Dick shrugged, looking away. “My contact gave me a list, but they said anything we salvage that _isn’t_ on the list is fair game for us to resell. Depending on what we find, we might even be able to finally get good use out of those smugglers compartments Jason insisted on installing.”

Steph scoffed. “Shoulda figured they’d make us do all the footwork.”

“Weren’t you the one complaining you don’t have enough parts to keep the engine working at more than seventy-five percent capacity?”

“Yeah. But I’d rather have money to pay for the _right_ parts instead of taking a gamble that what I need is on that ship… _and_ that your contact isn’t gonna take it from us.”

Dick glanced around the room, though he knew logically there was no way anyone was listening in. “I’ll tell you what,” he said. “If there’s something on my contact’s list that you need… we didn’t find it. The ship didn’t have it, or if it did, it was too damaged to get any use out of it.”

Steph raised her eyebrows. “And you’re _okay_ with that?”

“Not exactly... but that doesn’t really matter,” Dick conceded. “I’d rather not be dead out in open space, and I’m sure the Rebellion would prefer that we keep on flying. So, it balances out in the end.”

“I guess they have to keep _someone_ around to do all their shit jobs.” Steph rolled her eyes. “Though uh… going on that ship’s not gonna be a problem for you, is it? After everything…?”

Dick looked away. “I’ll be fine. It’s not like it was _my_ ship. It’s not even the ship of anyone I personally knew.” 

“But still.”

Dick sighed, letting his head fall back. “I know. But I’m not about to let you go in there without someone who can sense an ambush from a system away. Besides…” He reached down, unclipping one of his sabers from his belt and ignited it. The blue glow washed over the kitchen, fighting back the sharp white glare of the overhead lights. “If you run into any obstacles, this’ll be _way_ faster than a laser cutter.” 

Steph cocked her head at the saber, smiling faintly. “Well, you’re not wrong.”

Dick deactivated it, and the blade snapped back into the hilt. “If you’re on board with this, we should head to my contact’s coordinates as soon as possible. I wanna get in and out _way_ before the next Imperial patrol. Can you let Cass know so that she can start supply prep? I’m gonna need the time before we get there to try and smooth things over with Jason.”

Steph laughed. The sound of it was sharp and grating. “Aye aye, General. And, uh, good luck with that.”

“I’m not - “ Dick sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between his forefinger and thumb. “Why are you like this?”

Steph shrugged flippantly, taking a moment to ‘reassuringly’ smack him on the arm before walking out of the kitchen, presumably on her way to the bridge. 

Dick left in the other direction, following the pull of the Force.

* * *

Jason was _not_ sulking. Really. He just happened to be lying on the bunk in his room with the lights off, keeping his eyes closed until his tension headache went away. 

A tension headache that was _not_ helped by the incessant beeping of the door chime telling him someone wanted to talk to him, but was too polite to just barge in.

“ _What?_ ” Jason growled out, smacking the panel by his bunk that would open the door. 

“I brought you a peace offering?” 

When he cracked an eye open, Dick was silhouetted by the light from the hall. 

“Whatever,” he groaned, closing his eyes again. 

Dick took that as an invitation to step into the room, closing the door behind him. 

Jason tracked his movement by sound, listening to his footsteps as he walked to the bunk and took a seat on the edge of it. He could smell the caff before he saw it, and it was the only thing that convinced him to push himself up into a sitting position. He took the mug without comment, draining it in two large gulps. 

“You wanna talk about it?” Dick asked.

Jason shoved the mug back into Dick’s hands. “What do you think?”

Dick sighed, but seemed to decide against pushing the issue. “It’s going to be a salvage run,” he told him. “An old ship from the war my contact seems to think hasn’t been picked over yet. Payment is whatever we can strip that the Rebellion doesn’t desperately need.”

“So, almost nothing?” Jason muttered.

“Weren’t you just arguing with Steph about doing Rebellion jobs despite the low pay?”

“Can it,” Jason said. “Doesn’t mean I have to be happy about it.”

Dick sighed, putting the mug down on the floor by the bunk. He shifted back until he could lean against the wall, occupying the part of the bunk Jason had abandoned. 

Jason moved to sit next to him, shoulder to shoulder. If he was bothered by the way that Dick gravitated closer to him, laying his head on Jason’s shoulder, it wasn’t enough to mention it. 

“Today’s Empire Day,” Dick muttered, his voice soft and low. 

“They still have that bullshit?”

Dick rolled his eyes. “Every year.”

Outside of things that directly impact his survival, Jason tended to avoid keeping tabs on the Empire as much as possible. 

Dick, not so much. 

He couldn’t exactly say that he _got it_ \- after all, there was no lost love between him and the Order that chased him halfway across the Outer Rim - but he could understand grief. Loss. What it felt like to have your entire world ripped out from under you and to still have to keep going despite the pain. Even so, Jason had been running for a lot longer than Dick, and time had dulled the ache of it.

“You gonna be okay with going in that ship?” he asked, tentatively.

“Why does everyone keep asking me that?”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “You’re the one who understands all that Force bullshit. Take a wild guess.”

“Jason…” Dick started.

“Nope,” Jason cut him off. “I said I didn’t want to talk about it nine years ago, and nothing’s changed since then.”

Dick, again, didn’t fight him on it. Instead, he shifted closer, like a loth-cat chasing warmth. 

Secretly, Jason wondered how long it would be before Dick’s impatience began to outweigh his unwillingness to widen the rift between the two of them. 

“How close are we to the salvage?” he asked.

“About an hour’s travel in hyperspace,” Dick said. “Cass and Steph are prepping the salvaging tools, and I’m ready to head there whenever you are.”

Jason scoffed. “Why’d you waste time comin’ here when you coulda been gettin’ us in hyperspace already?”

Dick backed away just enough to look at him, not bothering to respond until Jason turned to meet his eyes. This close, he could feel the warmth of Dick’s breath ghosting against his. 

“Why wouldn’t I?” Dick asked. 

Jason was pretty sure he only imagined the way that Dick’s eyes darted down to his lips for a fraction of a second, but the thought made his breath catch all the same.

“Jason…” 

He let himself have this for the span of seven too-quick heartbeats before he pushed himself off the bunk and to his feet, breaking eye contact entirely. “Come on,” he said. “We have a ship to salvage.”

And with that, he swept out of the room, making a beeline to the front of the ship.

He listened for the sound of Dick’s footsteps following him, but he didn’t dare look.

It didn’t take long for him to reach the part of the ship they generously called the bridge. In reality, it wasn’t much more than a half-circle of consoles and two pilot chairs that purely by design flaw had ended up far too close together. The lights were dimmed and Jason left them that way, all but launching himself into the chair that was unofficially his. 

Dick drifted in a moment later, claiming the primary pilot’s seat. 

The tension between them had yet to dissipate, but Jason took it in stride as he began the sequence for starting up the hyperdrive engine. 

After comm checks with Cass and Steph to tell them they were about to take off, Dick engaged the drive, launching them into the blue whorl of the most convenient hyperspace lane.

They passed the hour in silence, though it was more than a little challenging for Jason to stop himself from snapping once Dick started levitating whatever was in the cockpit that hadn’t been nailed down. 

The minute they dropped out of hyperspace, Jason swiveled in his chair to face the comm and sensor relay. One look out of the viewscreen was enough to tell him the thicket of floating debris was dense enough they’d need to navigate it manually. 

Anyone else would have had a hell of a time pulling that one off. 

But anyone else wouldn’t have had the Force on their side, even before accounting for lightning-quick reflexes that had seen Dick through the Clone Wars without losing a single ship that he’d piloted.

Jason had never been able to pilot like that, even when he _did_ regularly use the Force.

For better or worse, the ship they’re looking for was in the thickest part of the mess. Better because it meant it was probably less picked-over than everything else. Worse because the density of the debris field meant their sensors were about as functional as the derelict ship parts floating around them. 

Still, when Dick set their ship down above one of the entry ports and engaged the inter-ship seal, the landing was smooth enough to make it look easy. 

With a nod from Dick, Jason shifted the ship to auxiliary power before the both of them made their way down to the hold.

When they got there, Steph was putting the last of her tools into a backpack. Cass waited next to her, the hold’s lights gleaming dully on the worn beskar of her armor. She sat perched on the hoversled they kept for these sorts of jobs, and from the look of it, she’d already grabbed Jason’s helmet and second blaster pistol from the armory.

With a nod of thanks, Jason took them both. 

Not for the first time, he thought that Dick looked painfully vulnerable when standing next to two full sets of Mandalorian armor - one inherited, one stolen - and the mis-matched, purple-painted plastoid monstrosity that Steph collected piecemeal from Imperials who wouldn’t be needing it anymore. 

But looks were deceiving. Despite Dick’s insistence on wearing the bare minimum of equipment needed to keep him alive in a vacuum, he was probably the best protected of them all. 

“Ready?” Cass signed before running a final set of checks on the hoversled’s electronics and localized gravity field.

“As we’ll ever be,” Jason said. He opened the door to the airlock, waiting for the rest of the crew to activate their mag boots before interfacing with the door to the Republic ship. As anticipated, it required an access code, for which he handed the interface off to Dick.

With a small, jarringly cheerful beep, the doors to the ship opened. Interlocking metal panels slid back to reveal a dark, gaping hallway. 

Dick ignited his lightsaber, and the blue glow bounced off of various floating debris and - if Jason cared to look closely enough - the occasional body. 

None of them were green enough for that to come as a surprise, but he could still hear Steph let out a small gasp when the light fell on the very frozen, very dead face of a clone. Without oxygen, the body hadn’t decomposed. 

“Hope he wasn’t anyone you knew,” Steph muttered over the comms.

“No,” Dick replied, not even bothering to hide the strain in his voice. “I don’t recognize the unit number or the tattoos. He never served under my command.”

“They all looked the same,” Jason said. “How would you even know?”

Dick turned to look at him with what was probably a glare beneath his helmet. 

Jason shrugged. “What?”

“No, they didn’t,” Dick rebutted. “Even though they were created from the same template, they all had a strong sense of individuality to them. Besides, even if they _had_ all appeared to be the same on the surface, they certainly didn’t look that way in the Force.”

“Whatever,” Jason scoffed, ducking around the body. “Can we get a move on? I’d like to be outta here before the Imps realize we’re poking around in their scrapyard.”

Dick was still glaring at him and didn’t seem inclined to move.

With a sigh, Cass pushed the hoversled forward, nudging both of them out of the way as she maneuvered it between them. 

“Like you said.” Steph shrugged, following behind her. “Let’s get a move on.”

Dick marched forward after them, holding his lightsaber aloft.

All Jason could do was follow.

* * *

The ship was just like Dick remembered. Republic cruisers were relatively similar, and the layout had been burned into his brain by months and years spent in the halls of ships just like these. 

“The left up ahead should lead to the engine room,” he told Steph. “Go down one level, take two rights and a left. If you run into any sealed off hallways, comm me and I’ll try to redirect you.”

“You remember all that?” Steph asked.

Dick shrugged. “It was kinda necessary information in a firefight.”

Cass nodded in agreement and began to push the hoversled down the side hallway.

“Stay on the comms,” Dick warned. “We’ll want to stay in contact if anything happens.”

“Yeah,” Jason said. “One of these bodies might come back to life.” For emphasis, he poked a grey-suited officer, sending the body floating in Steph’s direction.

“I hate you,” she said, ducking out of the body’s way.

“I know.”

She didn’t respond. Instead, she signaled to Cass to follow her, and together the two of them disappeared down the hallway.

Sensing that his disapproval would be wasted on Jason, Dick decided that discretion was the better part of valor and continued on to the command deck without another word. Jason followed him, and the sound of their mag boots against the durasteel floor reverberated through Dick’s suit. 

The door to the bridge was sealed with yet another keypad, but Oracle’s code opened it without issue. 

Dick threw his shields up the moment he stepped inside, but even that wasn’t enough to fully suppress his visceral reaction to being in a place so similar to the one where he fought and lost the Clone Wars. Where his life as he knew it came to an end. He felt a brief flash of gratitude that Jason had closed himself off from the Force too much for him to sense Dick’s reaction… and then felt an immediate rush of guilt.

Logically, he knew the vacuum of space was silent, but that still didn’t keep the phantom sound of blasterfire, the whir of a lightsaber, and the mechanical chorus of _good soldiers follow orders_ from echoing in his ears.

The Force around him was thick with pain and death. There was a darkness to it that had nothing to do with the lack of light. 

Dick shivered despite the thermal regulation of his suit, and his hands drifted to his blades. 

Jason noticed.

“We not alone?” he hissed over the comms.

Dick stilled, throwing his senses out across the entire wreck of the ship, and then farther still. 

The isolation following the destruction of the Order hadn’t been good for his abilities. For one, he was severely out of practice with his lightsaber, even though the common thugs they usually ran into didn’t exactly warrant anything more than basic saber techniques.

That said, the one thing he _had_ gotten better at since the war was his ability to sense danger from significant distances.

Case in point: he could sense a lone pirate ship passing along the edge of the junk field, but it moved on quickly enough. 

Once more, they were the only ones here.

“There’s no one,” he said. “Just… a lot of bad memories.”

Jason grunted at that, walking to the edge of the central catwalk and jumping down into the area that the bridge crew would have been working in.

Dick kept going until he reached the wide transparisteel viewport that dominated the front of the bridge. The wreckage of old ships spread out before him, deathly still. He knelt down, drawn to an irregularity in the floor. His finger traced the long mark: a scorched durasteel line with the edges of it bubbling up where they had melted. It hummed with energy invisible to the naked eye, and as he reached the end of the scoremark, the sense memory of it washed over him. 

A blade, green and pulsing as its owner moved faster than eyes could track, deflecting blaster bolts back at the clones that had shot them. The fall of many bodies. A moment of quiet so loud it rang with false hope. The _woosh_ of the bridge door opening, and the snap-hiss of another lightsaber igniting. The room drowned in a red, hellish light.

Dick pulled his hand back, instinctively clutching it against his chest as he retreated far behind his shields. He didn’t dare look close enough to discern detail, but he suddenly felt a _presence_ on the very edge of his perception in the Force. Cold and unyielding. Searching. His skin itched with the need to say something, to warn them. But they didn’t have his training or his proficiency in suppressing his emotional responses. Warning them would spark fear, which would draw the attention of their silent observer faster than anything else.

They just had to be quick and quiet. Everything would be fine.

“I think I found something,” Jason said.

Dick closed his eyes and focused on breathing evenly. He let the current of the Force flow through him, allowing it to carry away the bitter edge of his uncertainty and trepidation. With a clearer mind, the unknown observer passed over him without notice, eventually fading into imperceptibility. 

“Hey, asshole,” Jason said, popping his head over the edge of the deck. “You gonna sit there and meditate all day?”

“Ah, sorry.” Dick walked over and dropped down into the pit with Jason. “Got a bit distracted.”

“A bit?”

“Maybe more than a bit,” he conceded. In front of him, several of the control interfaces had their covers removed. They floated where Jason had left them, along with a few torn out wires and broken ship components. Clearly he’d been deep in the guts of this thing while Dick was out of it.

“Well, now’s not the time,” Jason said, handing Dick a small multitool and a datapad with Oracle’s list. “Steph said most of the required stuff is probably in the engine room, so it’s up to us to grab anything we have a decent chance of reselling or reusing in the Outlaw.”

Dick switched on the multitool’s light and directed it towards the circuitry Jason had been working on. He recognized most of it, of course; he’d had to take at least intermediate mechanics just like every other Padawan in the temple. But proficiency wasn’t quite the same thing as having a gift for it. 

Steph, for example, could turn an engine inside out, put it back together, and make it run better than when it was new. It was a blessing and a curse, though the latter was only because every time she started ranting about engines or circuitry, Dick couldn’t help but be reminded of - 

He inhaled sharply, blinking several times in quick succession. 

Well, that was a thought for another time. 

He refocused on his task, holding the light and sorting whatever Jason pulled out into floating piles that would be sent to the Rebellion and piles that they would keep as their payment.

With each new panel freed from the control stations, their haul grew. 

Really, it was almost a record that they cleared out nearly the entire bridge without incident.

The key word being nearly.

By the time they got partway through the second to last panel, Dick was mostly spacing out and letting Jason do the heavy lifting, so to speak. 

It was a state of mind he was knocked straight out of when Jason froze entirely.

“Huh,” Jason said, in a reaction that Dick would later describe as ‘horrifyingly inept’ for what happened next. Because the very moment he finished speaking, a red light began blinking overhead. 

The two of them looked up at the same time, seeing nothing but the blinking _warning_ light that at one point would have meant the ship was under attack. 

“This ship isn’t supposed to have power,” Dick said.

Jason turned to glare at him. “No _shit._ So how in the Sith hells do you explain-”

“What the _fuck_ did you two do?!” The comms blared to life, Steph’s voice blasting over them. Dick wasn’t ashamed to say that both of them startled. 

“This ship isn’t supposed to have power,” Steph continued.

“We didn’t do anything!” Jason yelled back.

“Well, it wasn’t us!”

“Oh yeah? Well - “

Dick didn’t hear the rest of the argument, even with it blasting right in his ears. He didn’t see Jason gesticulating wildly despite the fact that Steph couldn’t see him. He didn’t even feel the racing pulse of his own heart beating in his chest.

What he did feel was a creeping sensation of cold, as if icy water were rising up from the floor and submerging him. The world around him faded, only to reemerge in near-incomprehensible flashes of things that weren’t there. White plastoid harsh with sterile light. Hushed voices silenced by the sweep of a dark cloak. A whisper in his ear, quiet and barely there. Incomprehensible except for two words.

_Found you._

A skull splitting pressure lanced through Dick’s head and he felt himself start to go limp, trying desperately to shield himself.

Jason stopped mid-argument and rushed over to him, frantically trying to ask him what was wrong. 

Dick forced his suit’s recycled air into his lungs as if those were the last breaths he’d ever take. His muscles shuddered. If they hadn’t been in a vacuum, he might have collapsed entirely. 

“We… we need to leave,” he forced out.

“But we’re almost-”

“ _Now_.”

Jason’s expression became pained. He glanced around at the piles of salvage they’d collected. 

“Steph. Cass,” Dick said through the comms. “Bring whatever you have to the bridge. We’re leaving.”

“Uh, we’ve still got stuff on the list,” Steph said.

“Doesn’t matter,” Dick snapped. “We have to get back to the ship, power it up, and navigate the hell out of this junkheap before the Imps come crashing down on us.”

“Imps? How would they even know we’re here?”

“Maybe a trap? Look, I don’t _know_ , but unless you want to stick around and find out, we need to-”

Dick went fully limp, his eyes rolling back in his head.

“Dick!” Jason yelled, grabbing his shoulders..

A strong, steady grip holding him close was the last thing Dick felt before the cold swelled up around him and everything went black.

* * *

“Steph, get him to his bunk,” Jason said the minute he’d torn off his helmet and oxygen tank. “I’m going to steer us out of this mess. Cass, you’re with me.”

Steph quickly locked down the hoversled so that it wouldn’t fly all over the place if they ran into any trouble. Then, with surprising strength for a woman of her size, she hefted Dick across her shoulders and made for the crew quarters.

Jason and Cass booked it to flight control, and Cass slid into the gunner’s seat without prompting.

The pre-takeoff checks didn’t turn up anything wrong. Similarly, the scanners didn’t detect any ships or life forms within their not inconsiderable range. 

But in Jason’s experience, Dick was never this particular brand of dramatic without reason, so he took off into the debris field all the same.

It was easy to forget that Dick only made it _look_ easier than it was.

The takeoff itself was fine, but the bones of derelict ships formed a three-dimensional maze around the Outlaw. Even with constant checks of their proximity sensors and with Cass blasting some of the more stubborn debris away, they still slammed side-first into another ship, nearly cracking their viewport on a stray durasteel strut. The next moment, they passed close enough to _something_ that it made an ear splitting scraping noise as it gouged a new line in the bottom of their hull. 

Jason swore loudly and often, using language that would put most Outer Rim bounty hunters to shame. Judging from Cass’s expression, he’d even said a few things she hadn’t heard before.

They didn’t break free of the debris field so much as they made it to a section that was slightly less likely to get them killed, but it was a relief all the same.

Jason let himself sag against the high back of the pilot’s chair, his hands clinging limply to the ship’s haptic interface.

“Where’s Dick when you need him?” he grumbled, closing his eyes as he tried to force back the headache he could _feel_ coming on. 

The moment of peace lasted only as long as it took Cass to throw something at him, hitting him on the shoulder with unerring accuracy.

“ _What?”_ Jason asked, cracking open an eye.

“Our sensors are picking up a ship,” Cass signed, gesturing to the single, blinking dot on their long-distance scanners. 

“What the…” He swiveled to the viewport facing the new ship’s direction. With one hand, he told the console to isolate and magnify that area of space. With the other, he pressed the sequence of buttons that would begin warming up the hyperdrive. 

The minute the image resolved itself into something recognizable, Jason almost wished it hadn’t.

He punched the button activating ship-wide communications.

“We’ve got company!” he yelled. “Get ready for an emergency jump!”

“You can’t jump _now!_ ” Steph yelled back, her voice staticky through the bridge’s speakers. “The ship’s been on auxiliary power for a few hours. She’s _old._ You have to wait for everything to come back online.”

“You wanna tell that to the Imperial ship that just showed up on our radar?” Jason snarled.

He didn’t have to understand Huttese to know that she was probably cursing him, his mother, the Imperials, and probably anyone else in this sector of the galaxy. 

“ _Whatever,_ ” Steph shouted, eventually. “You _should_ wait fifteen minutes. I can get us going in ten.”

“Make it five.”

“ _Fuck you._ ”

In the end, it only took her seven before she gave the all clear. The Imperial ship had already swept the sector, and it didn’t take a genius pilot to know it had set a course right for them. 

“Now or never,” Jason muttered, gripping the handle that would activate the hyperdrive and _pulling._

The _Outlaw_ launched forward, rocketing into hyperspace for just long enough to get them to the closest star system. 

They dropped back into realspace just beyond two bright yellow binary stars. 

Jason picked a random direction and pulled the lever again. 

A red dwarf surrounded by a thick asteroid belt. 

Again. And again.

Jason kept jumping the ship until, nearly an hour later, they reached a system that scrambled their navigation almost immediately on entry. The only other thing in the system was a distant, flickering star that, on closer inspection, wasn’t a star at all.

“A pulsar?” Cass signed to him. She knocked her fist against the navigational array, but all that did was cause the static to jump a bit.

“Yeah,” Jason said. “No nav system means we’re jumping blind. Might end up inside a planet or a star if we’re unlucky. But the upshot is that if our systems are fucked, so are the chances of any Imps tracking us out of this system.”

“Space is big,” Cass signed.

“Yeah, and?”

“The chances of actually running into anything are astronomically low.”

Jason glowered. “I _know_ that.”

Cass raised an eyebrow at him but refrained from commenting.

“Okay, okay,” he relented. “If it’s this or disappearing into some Imperial black site…” 

He pulled the lever. The hyperspace lane surrounded them. With a useless wish sent to the gods or the Force or whatever, Jason released the lever. 

When realspace manifested around them again, he was expecting stars. What he got instead was the majority of the viewscreen being taken up by a _way_ too close planet.

“You said astronomically low!”

Cass shrugged and punched him in his shoulder way harder than necessary. 

Jason got the message and yanked up on the ship’s controls before they could be pulled into the planet's gravity well. When they were fully out of range, he grabbed the lever again, pulling it to make another jump… only to be met with a shower of sparks and an alarm blaring somewhere in the vicinity of the engine room. 

The comm system crackled to life, but no sound came through. No sound needed to, since he could practically _hear_ Steph’s glare. 

“The last jump was from a pulsar system, so at least they can’t track us?” he said, hoping for a merciful death.

“Jason,” Steph said, deathly calm. “If we were on Tatooine right now, I’d sell you to the fucking Jawas in exchange for whatever I’m going to have to replace to make this rustbucket fly again.”

“Well it’s a good thing we’re not on Tatooine then.” Despite himself, Jason glanced at the planet that they’d narrowly avoided, just to double check. From orbit, it had way more water than that desert shithole had ever had in its entire existence. “I’m going to land the ship. Once we’re planetside we can take stock of what needs fixing.”

“Huh. I wasn’t expecting such a rational answer from you.”

“ _Hey_ ,” Jason said. “I can be _rational_.”

“And I’m the Queen of Naboo,” Steph cackled. “But, yeah, you do that. The sooner we’re on the ground, the better. Especially with Dick bein’ all… you know.”

Jason looked down at the planet below, his hand tightening on the ship’s throttle. Whatever the fuck this planet was called, it was on the smaller side. He wouldn’t have been surprised if at one point it had been a rogue moon traveling close enough to be pulled into the star’s orbit. The planet’s equator was thick with forests that faded gradually before becoming barren wastes at the poles. He tilted the ship down into the pull of the planet’s gravity, aiming for the forest.

“I know,” he muttered. The ship shuddered faintly as it entered into the atmosphere. 

“How’re the engines holding up?” he asked over the comms.

“Fine, for now. Just keep her steady and we should stay that way.”

The shuddering didn’t stop, but it didn’t get worse either. All the way from the exosphere to the planet’s surface, Jason’s hands were white-knuckled on the ship’s controls. He cruised at a low altitude until they reached the first clearing big enough to touch down. The tops of the trees scraped against the bottom of the ship’s hull. The _Outlaw_ touched down in the underbrush at the edge of the clearing. From the viewport, the ship’s light poured out into the darkened forest, illuminating the first layer of trees before fading into blackness. 

“We’re all clear,” Cass signed, flipping a few switches to put the ship on auxiliary power. 

Jason stood and stretched, his spine cracking angrily. “Why do I get the feeling it’s gonna be a long night?”

“Because the ship’s internal clock isn’t synced to whatever time it is here, so it _literally_ will be a longer night?”

Jason rolled his eyes, sighing. “You know what I mean.”

Cass exhaled long and low before nodding. She stood, putting a hand on Jason’s shoulder before heading back into the ship, towards the crew quarters. 

He couldn’t do much more than follow.

* * *

Thick eddies of humidity swirled through the air, brushing through fronds of bioluminescent foliage. The air almost seemed to carry the light with it. 

It was beautiful and dizzying. 

Dick found himself stumbling through it, catching himself on a towering amber spire, glowing and translucent.

The lights shifted, and the shadows with them. 

_You’ve been gone for a long time._

Dick glanced around him. There was nothing but the bright, dense foliage gleaming in Felucia’s night. 

_Too long._

“Who are you?” Dick asked, putting his back to the trunk and reaching for his sabers. The movement threw his cloak back, and the wind caught it, the edges of it flaring out into the night air.

 _Where are you?_ _I thought I’d finally found you, and then…_

The ground began to shudder and crumble. Dark, smooth shapes rose up as if pushed from beneath. The dirt fell away and light copper shone in the ambient light. A spark flew, and then another. Scorch marks traced themselves across the metal, giving way to the glowing red slag left in the wake of a lightsaber strike. The broken, carved up bodies of droids surrounded him, though his blades hadn’t moved.

“What is this?”

_Why did you run?_

The spire grew hot behind Dick’s back, and he threw himself into a forward roll just in time to miss the blood red blade that cleaved it in two. A clean cut. The top piece slid along the cut, downward as gravity reached up to grab it and pull it down. The bottom half was left smouldering, smoke curling up from it to frame a man with a dark cloak and a red, double-bladed lightsaber. 

_Why?_ The man’s mouth moved, but Dick heard the words projected into his skull as through telepathy. _Why did you leave me? Again._

Dick took a step back, nearly tripping on one of the droids before managing to right himself. 

“Who are you?” he asked again. Internally he recited every mantra he could think of, and it was just enough to keep his voice steady.

The red saber snapped shut and the man holstered it. He looked up, tilting his head just enough that the light touched upon pale skin and a sharp jaw. A mouth that turned down in an expression left unreadable by the deep shadows of his hood. 

The man opened his mouth - 

And the world went dark. 

* * *

Jason didn’t know how long he’d been sitting in the chair, but it was long enough that his legs and back had begun to ache. Somehow, that seemed inconsequential compared to the still, unconscious form of Dick lying on the bunk as Cass checked him over. 

They’d been at it for an hour but still hadn’t found any tangible cause for… this. 

“I’m telling you,” Steph said from where she was perched on the small desk in the corner of Dick’s room. “It’s some sorta Force bullshit.”

“You better hope it isn’t,” Jason muttered. “‘Cause ain’t no way we can fix that, especially out in the ass end of nowhere.”

“Well, how _else_ would you explain it?” Steph snapped.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s been overworking himself? It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“But it definitely _would_ be the first time that _he inexplicably passed out from it_.”

Steph was full-on glaring at this point.

“Well, what do you want _me_ to do about it?”

“Nothing! Or, something. I don’t know! At least take a five minute break from pretending you were never a Jedi and fucking acknowledge that Force bullshit is a thing.”

“Hey,” Jason spat. “I was _never_ a -”

“Good for you! _I don’t care_ . You might think that whatever fragile ego you’ve built around this Sith-may-care persona is cute or that it helps you cope with some bullshit in your past, but believe me, right now it _isn’t helping_.”

Jason stood up, his hands balling into fists as his brain began running the angles of a fistfight in Dick’s quarters.

Something metal flew between the two of them, crashing into the durasteel wall with a resounding clang. 

Both of them whipped around to stare at Cass, who was glaring at them with all the power of a star about to go supernova.

“That’s it,” she signed. “I’m going on patrol.”

“What?” Steph asked. “ _Why?_ It’s dark as hell out there.”

“I work better in the dark.”

Jason had no idea if she was bluffing.

“You shouldn’t go alone,” Steph argued.

“Does it look like I care?” 

Steph looked like she wanted to say something more, but Jason put a hand on her arm before she could.

“So,” Cass continued. “Both of you _shut up_ and stay here. And I swear to the Force, if you’re still arguing when I get back, Dick _won’t_ be the only one who ends up in a coma.” 

Though it wasn’t strictly sign language, she punctuated the sentence with a middle finger for each of them. 

Honestly, Jason believed her. He crossed his arms looking away.

Steph hung her head.

Having no more patience for either of them, Cass marched out the door, shouldering past them.

A mildly antagonistic glance was the only agreement that passed between.

Steph walked over to the chair that he had stood up from and yanked it away before he could sit back down.

He glared at her, but her only response was to stick her tongue out at him. 

Without a chair, Jason had a choice between sitting on top of Dick’s desk, clearing space on the bed, or resigning himself to the floor. With a sigh, he made his way to the bed. 

Dick’s jacket was balled up by the head of the bed. As much as he loved the thing, he’d had it for the last nine years that Jason had known him. So, it was kind of a mess, and Jason only felt a little bad about moving it gently to the floor and taking its place. 

As he sat down, Dick shifted. His arm moved until the edge of his hand brushed against Jason’s thigh. 

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the only one who noticed.

“Well, look at that,” Steph said, smirking. “I guess you really are his favorite.”

“Bullshit,” Jason said. His brain spun into overtime, trying to think of a way to deflect the attention. “... Cass is his favorite. She’s everyone’s favorite.”

She shrugged. “You won’t hear any argument from me.”

“You’re biased,” he said.

“Yep.”

The room lapsed into silence once more, but this time it was slightly more comfortable. 

Jason looked down at Dick. He covered the errant hand with his own, squeezing lightly. Whatever was going on in there, he hoped it was better than what was going on out here.

* * *

Dick opened his eyes to near-darkness. Only the faintest moonlight pierced through the forest’s thick canopy; just enough to see the shades of grey making up creaking branches and tangled roots. Leaves rustled overhead. A cold wind blew, carrying his robes with it. 

Almost subconsciously, he reached for his lightsabers, just brushing his fingers against them to ensure they were still there. 

The trees whispered. They called his name.

Dick turned quickly, trying to locate the source of the voice. 

“Who’s there?” he called. He drew a single saber. The blade ignited, whirring quietly. Blue light flooded the clearing surrounding him, casting deep shadows. 

Laughter threaded through the trees, dripping down from the leaves. It ran down Dick’s spine like ice water. Shivers trailed in its wake. 

“That _is_ the question,” the voice rasped. 

A shadow shifted just beyond the trees. 

Dick turned towards it, drawing his second saber.

“Show yourself.” 

The trees shuddered down to their very roots. The shadows drew together at the edge of the sabers’ light. A person’s silhouette.

Dick held his sabers out, throwing their light farther. 

“Are you certain?” the shadows whispered.

The _no_ burned in Dick’s throat. 

The form stepped forward. Shadows stitched together into a robe black as the void. Two pale hands emerged from the darkness. Fingers curled around the edges of a low-draping hood.

Dick edged away. Against all logic, his sabers flickered and hissed. 

The hood covering the figure’s face rose. And fell back.

* * *

Jason had never been to Solviri. Neither had anyone that he knew or, for that matter, most of the people that he _didn’t_ know. Hell, he only knew the name of the damn place after Cass told them that she’d run into a village while she spent the nightwas scouting out her surroundings. 

She was back on the ship now, hopefully sleeping off the patrol _and_ any residual frustration at Jason and Steph’s fight.

Honestly, Jason would rather be doing that too, but _someone_ decided that since there was daylight now, he needed to leave well enough alone for a while and get some fresh air or some bullshit like that. 

Then again, he was about ninety percent sure that Steph just wanted a spare set of arms to lug around whatever engine shit she’d inevitably head back to the ship with. Though when he pointed _that_ out, she just raised an eyebrow and pointed to the hoversled loaded down with whatever salvage from the Empire ship that she thought would sell for a significant amount of credits. 

“Are you kidding?” Steph asked, shoving aside a jungle leaf the size of her torso. “There’s a _lot_ of damage. Actually, scratch that, there’s so much damage that Basic can’t even _begin_ to explain how much damage there is. We’re gonna need at _least_ you, me, the sled, and like five more trips before the ship is even halfway to flying again.”

“Seriously?” Jason muttered, finally resorting to the knife he normally kept strapped to his hip. The foliage gave way slightly quicker beneath the edge of his blade, but only just.

“Hey,” Steph grumbled. “ _You’re_ the one who decided to jump us through a pulsar system.”

“Nope. That was all Cass’s idea.”

“I definitely believe that,” Steph deadpanned.

A handful of minutes passed with only the ambient sounds of the jungle around them. But, eventually, they finally found themselves breaking through the treeline at the edge of the village.

“Huh,” Jason said, looking out over the town.

“What?”

“I know Cass said it was small, but…”

“Nah, that’s just your Coruscant showing. Anywhere on Tatooine, this would be nearly the biggest thing around.”

They made their way through town until they found something that at least vaguely resembled a mechanic’s shop.

“Too many trees for Tatooine,” Jason mumbled as they pulled the hoversled up alongside it. 

“And too few buildings for Coruscant.” Steph shrugged. “Look, I’m going to go and barter for what we need and honestly, you’re pretty useless to me there. Go do whatever the hell it is that you do in your free time.”

“And be back in time to carry your shit for you?”

“Read my mind.” Steph gave him a saccharine smile before turning on her heel and pushing open the layered netting pretending to be a building’s door. 

Through a hole that looked like it had been punched through the wall, Jason saw a grumpy-looking Rodian pop his head up from a pile of scrap taller than he was.

Steph crossed her arms and said something that he was too far away to hear. The Rodian responded with a rude gesture, to which Steph started laughing.

Deciding that discretion was the better part of valour, Jason stepped away from the shop’s main entrance. There were several sturdy-seeming crates nearby, so he sat on one of them, crossing his arms and hopefully looking vaguely intimidating. 

Townspeople passed by him pushing carts or carrying baskets woven from the local foliage. A few of them glanced over furtively when they thought he couldn't see them - he doubted Solviri had many visitors - but no one tried to speak to him. 

Or, almost no one. 

Jason had managed to slip into a shallow daydream about high-end blaster mods when a quiet thump interrupted him. He cracked an eye, taking in the reed basket overloaded with a local variety of fruit. His eyes moved to the hands curled around the basket’s handles and then to the face of a man staring down at him.

“Hold still," he said, completely seriously.

"The fuck-?!" Jason went to reach for his blasters, but before he could grab them, the man had a knife out and… seemed to have some sort of disgusting looking centipede speared on the tip of it. A trickle of bright green blood dripped down the blade before the man flicked it and the bug into the ground.

Jason looked at the man, at the bug corpse, and then back at the man.

"I see you haven’t yet been acquainted with the local insects yet. Can't be too careful… one bite and we'd have to put you in the ground tomorrow morning."

Jason relaxed his grip on his guns, sinking back against the patchwork wall. "I hate this fucking planet," he muttered.

"You and nearly everyone else who's stuck here." The man shrugged before taking one of his fruit and offering it to Jason.

"Uh… I'll pass."

"Suit yourself." He pulled back the fruit and took a bite of it. Apparently it was juicy, because some of the pulp escaped and trailed down the man's chin. “How long are you staying planet-side?” he asked.

"None of your business," Jason grumbled, hoping that that would be the end of it.

It wasn't.

The man chuckled and continued eating his fruit. "Can't blame you. Mysteriously showing up in a village where most people can't remember the last time they saw a new face? The less information, the better."

Jason tipped his head back against the wall. He could have sworn he saw the other man's eyes follow the motion. "Look, not that I'm not grateful or anything," he gestured to the dead bug on the ground. "But do you want something? Because that’s the only reason I can think of that explains why we’re still talking."

The man gave him a long, appraising look that Jason was _almost_ certain he could interpret.

"Maybe," he said like a cryptic bastard. "But I think the more important question is what do _you_ want?"

Jason raised an eyebrow. “Well, I’d like to get off this Sith-damned planet for starters.”

“Relatable. But if that ends up taking a bit longer than expected, I imagine we’ll be seeing you around town a bit more.”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Hmmm. That’s a shame.” The man took a final bite before tossing aside the eaten fruit’s core. “You’re one of the better sights.” And, with that, the man picked up his bucket, fucking _winked_ , and walked off.

Jason watched him until he disappeared into the small market set up in the town’s center.

“What the fuck is that?”

Jason nearly jumped out of his skin. When he turned to look, Steph had finally emerged from the shop. “What the fuck is what?”

“That.” Steph jabbed at the dead insect with a boot, her face screwing up in disgust.

“Local specialty apparently,” Jason said. “Also incredibly venomous.” He pushed himself away from the wall, coming to stand on his feet.

Steph shuddered. “I hate this planet.”

“You can say that again… speaking of, did you get what we need?”

Steph jerked a finger at the hoversled. It was still loaded down, but what it was loaded down with looked different. “Yep,” she said, popping the _p_. “Or, mostly. We should be fine, but I need to install this stuff before I can know for sure.”

Jason kicked at the insect between them. “Goin’ back through the forest is gonna be _real_ fun.”

* * *

It wasn’t. 

No one got venomed to death by gross insects, thankfully. But he could almost guarantee that whoever designed the hoversled didn’t have Solviri in mind. Somehow it was even harder to maneuver the thing through the trees and underbrush on the return journey. 

As it was, by the time they finally pushed the hoversled into the ship, they had more than a few cuts from sharp plants. 

Jason also had the added bonus of way too much foliage in places it never should have been. 

The moment the door was closed, he sagged against the wall, sighing deeply.

On the other side of the hoversled, Steph stretched her arms above her head, arching her back until it cracked loudly. “Fight you for the shower?” she said, not even bothering to look at him.

“Nah,” he said. “You take it. I’m gonna go check on our resident coma patient.”

“Suit yourself.” With a hand on the hoversled, Steph pulled it along with her, off towards the engine room. 

Jason went the other direction. It wasn’t the most direct way to get to Dick’s quarters, but his feet seemed to take him in a circuitous route all the same.

He drifted past weapons storage and through the dining room. The chairs and table had all been pushed to the side to make way for an eclectic assortment of baskets and storage crates that they’d been using to stash any food that they found on their patrols. 

Jason was big enough to admit that _maybe_ Steph had a point about their food storage dwindling, but thankfully the abundance of strange but mostly-edible animals and plantlife on Solviri put an end to the problem. 

He took a moment to grab a few fruits - the same sort that the man from earlier had been carrying, strangely enough - before continuing down towards crew quarters.

When he reached Dick’s room, the door was already open. Inside, Cass sat on a chair angled so that she could keep an eye on Dick and on the door’s entrance at the same time.

Dick was where he’d been when Jason left: curled up on his bed, covered in blankets, and mumbling incoherently in his sleep. 

“Anything new?” he asked, coming to stand by Cass.

Cass shook her head. She reached a hand out and placed it on Dick’s shoulder for just a moment before standing up and gesturing for Jason to take the chair.

“Now that you’re here, I’m going to take a nap and a shower,” she signed. “Possibly not in that order.”

“Steph’s already in the shower,” Jason said. He sunk down into the chair, shifting it a bit closer to the edge of the bed. “She called dibs.”

Cass didn’t say anything, but with the smirk she gave Jason, she didn’t need to.

He could have sworn he was imagining the slight bounce in her steps as she left the room, closing the door behind her. 

Jason crossed his arms, leaned back against the chair, and prepared to wait. 

Dick seemed calmer than he had been since he collapsed. He still muttered incomprehensibly, but the many layers on top of him were only a _little_ twisted around him, and his breath was as deep as it should be for someone sleeping. Part of Jason wondered what had changed, but most of him was just glad that Dick seemed to be doing better… comparatively, at least. 

Jason leaned forward in the chair until he was half on top of the bed. 

It wasn’t comfortable, but the warmth radiating from Dick’s body and the steadiness of his breath were soothing. And it wasn’t long before he felt himself drifting off.

* * *

“Do you ever miss it?”

Dick opened his eyes, giving them a moment to adjust to the darkness of the room. 

“Miss what?” he asked, turning to face the body next to him.

“This.” Tim shrugged. It was too dark to see his expression, but on nights like these, he wasn’t quite as good at hiding his emotions behind his words.

“Very specific,” Dick said, smiling. 

A faint breeze gusted through the open window, rustling the plants that took up nearly all the shelving in Dick’s room. He shivered. Coruscant springs were mild, but he had never really gotten used to them.

Tim held out a hand, using the Force to lift the blanket that had been bunched up on the end of the bed. He drew closer to stretch an arm across Dick’s chest and rest his head on Dick’s shoulder, pulling the blanket around them. 

He moved his arm accordingly, giving Tim room to get comfortable before looping his arm around Tim’s side. “Didn’t Bruce teach you not to use the Force frivolously?” Dick asked, laughing beneath his breath.

“You being too afraid to _suggest_ things through the Force doesn't mean that the rest of us can’t use it to stay warm. Besides, didn’t Bruce teach _you_ not to sneak out of the Temple at night?” Tim said without missing a beat.

“I don’t… um. I was just...”

“Just going out to see a certain exiled Tamaranian princess even though the Master of the Order _personally_ lectured you about the dangers of attachment the last time he caught you?”

“Well, _someone’s_ gotta give Bruce something to rant about. If it wasn’t attachment, I’m sure he would have found a way to lecture me for breathing.”

“Jedi do not need oxygen,” Tim growled in a surprisingly good Bruce impression. “Only the Force.”

“Exactly!” Dick said. “You don’t want to be on the receiving end of _that_ talk do you? So really, I’m doing everyone a favor.”

“Uh-huh,” Tim drawled. “Though now that I think about it, since you started seeing her, Bruce hasn’t lectured me _once._ I don’t think he even _noticed_ that I used his Council-level clearance codes to get into the holocron vault in the archives.”

“You did _what?”_ Dick laughed. “When I was his Padawan, I couldn’t get to class five minutes late without him hearing about it.”

“Sounds about right,” Tim said. “He spent so much time watching you that he never even noticed what his next two Padawans got up to.”

“Spent? Tim, I promise you he’s not about to stop trying to catch me breaking the rules on attachment. Whatever you’re planning in that tricky little head of yours is going to go just fine… even if you apparently need a _holocron_ of all things to do it.”

“You’re probably right,” Tim sighed. His fingertips dug into Dick’s chest, just enough to hurt. “Why would he have even noticed that I’d been spending more and more time in my room, staring into an old dark-sider’s holocron for hours on end?”

“... Tim?” Dick asked, sitting up just enough to see where Tim was lying on his chest.

“After all, he didn’t even notice that Padawan number two had started Falling to the dark side until he’d already killed a man.”

Tim shifted, blinking his eyes open to meet Dick’s stare.

Eyes that were a bright, burning gold.

“And we all know how _that_ ended.”


	2. Everything You Fear to Lose

Jason’s sleep was restless, when he managed to sleep at all.

His bed was too hard, or he couldn’t find the right position, or his brain kept spinning in an endless loop of anxious energy.

Five days. Six nights. And still, Dick remained unconscious.

Jason sat up in bed, burying his head in his hands as he tried to exhale his frustration. The blankets were a twisted mess around his legs, and he kicked them away hard enough that they tipped over the edge of his bed, landing on the floor with a quiet thump.

He turned off the alarm he had set before it even had a chance to go off. 

Groaning, Jason stumbled to the door. His hand missed the activation panel the first few times, but he was so out of it that it barely even registered by the time he stepped out into the darkened corridor.. 

With ten minutes to spare, he walked a circuitous route through the ship. First, to the dining room where they’d been storing all the weird but edible food that he and Steph had been finding on their trips into town. Then, to engineering, with a peace offering in hand.

Steph didn’t look up when he entered, but she didn’t snap at him either. That usually meant things were going well.

He handed her a small, aggressively blue citrus fruit, and didn’t bother speaking until she’d practically inhaled the whole thing.

As she ate, it became clear that the circles beneath her eyes were darker than they’d been the afternoon before. 

“When was the last time you slept?” Jason asked.

“About two parsecs ago.”

He glared at her. “I fuckin’ misspoke, okay? When are you gonna let it go?”

“I dunno,” she said. “Depends on how long a parsec is.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he groaned. “Like you haven’t, I don’t know, crossed the wrong wires at some point in the last week.”

“Nope,” she said, way too cheerfully. “I’m incapable of human error.” 

“Fuck off,” He rolled his eyes. “You’re just as sleep deprived as the rest of us.”

She shrugged. “Gotta get off this damn planet somehow.”

“You’re not wrong… but seriously, though, when was the last time you slept?”

She narrowed her eyes, going back to digging around in the guts of the engine. No answer seemed to be forthcoming.

“Believe me when I say that it _physically_ hurts me to care about other peoples’ wellbeing,” he said. “But you need to sleep.”

“Neither of those statements are true,” she muttered.

“ _Stephanie._ ”

She looked up at the ceiling for a long moment before finally putting down the multitool and turning to face him.

“Five more minutes, okay? I’m almost done with this part of the engine.”

He looked at her with his flattest expression.

“My shift is about to start. Do you _really_ want to keep Cass from sleeping when she inevitably tries to get you to go to bed instead of resting?”

Steph glowered at him. “That’s a cheap shot.”

“Works though.”

“ _Fine._ But _only_ until it’s Cass’s turn again.”

“You’ve got a deal.”

He sat and stared, until she got the hint and started packing up her more volatile equipment. Even once she seemed finished, Jason didn’t actually leave until the engine room doors were closed behind them. 

Steph rolled her eyes as she headed off to her and Cass’s shared room, but Jason counted it as a victory.

When he finally reached Dick’s room, Cass was still sitting next to the bed.

“You’re late,” she signed. 

“I was convincing your space heater to go to bed,” he responded.

She laughed at that, but her expression quickly went back to being somber. 

“He’s getting worse. Approaching fever temperatures. And his sleep’s been more restless than not.” She stood from the chair, gesturing for Jason to approach.

He rested his hand on Dick’s forehead. It was warm to the touch.

As he pulled his hand away, Dick shifted, reaching forward to loosely grab it. 

Cass tilted her head, looking on curiously. 

“He doesn’t do that on my shifts,” she commented. Her expression was purposefully neutral, obscuring the exact implication of that.

“Yeah well, I guess I’m just special.”

Cass raised an eyebrow at him, but he refused to think about _exactly_ what she meant by that.

“See you in four,” she signed, leaving the room.

And then there were two. 

Jason took up his position in the chair at the head of Dick’s bed. Exhaustion weighed down his limbs, and his head felt like it might fall off if he tipped it too far back. But still he sat sentinel. 

An hour passed. Then two. He shifted in the chair to try and find a position that took pressure off his lower back. Then he crossed one leg over the other before deciding that was uncomfortable and switching. Sometime around the three hour mark he finally gave up and began to pace the room, but ten minutes later he was right back in the chair.

If he hadn’t known that Dick had been like this for nearly a week, he would have thought he looked peaceful. It was distracting, in a way. Not least because Jason wished that _he_ could rest like that for just one of his off-duty shifts… it wasn’t that he resented having to watch over Dick. But it was the waiting and the uncertainty of it all that got to him. And it didn’t help that on top of it all, he was fucking _exhausted_.

The back of his brain stopped counting hours and started counting minutes. He began to slip in and out of consciousness, subconsciously slumping down into the chair before realizing what was happening and shooting right back up.

It was at the three hour and forty minute mark that he probably would have fallen asleep… if it wasn’t for a sudden, warm weight on his arm. 

Glancing down quickly, he saw that Dick’s hand had found him once more. His grip was tight, and his skin was nearly burning even through Jason’s jacket. 

When Jason looked up, Dick’s eyes were still closed. He could see the rapid movement of his pupils, but his eyelids were shut tight.

“Dick?” he asked, placing a hand over the one grasping his arm.

“... don’t go.” Dick whispered, almost too quietly to hear.

“I’m not going anywhere,” Jason said.

The hand on his arm pulled with more strength than Jason was expecting, and he found himself being yanked forward onto the bed. Not wanting to accidentally hurt him, Jason went along with it and found himself lying next to Dick. On Dick’s bed. It _definitely_ wasn’t something he’d thought about way too much at any point, but if he _had_ , he wouldn’t have thought it would happen like this. 

His hand was still on Jason’s arm, squeezing tighter. With another tug, Dick pulled him closer until Jason was nearly face to face with him. He could feel soft, warm puffs of breath against his face. His lips looked slightly chapped in the moment before Jason forced himself to look away from him. 

“ _What the fuck_ ,” he muttered. 

Dick mumbled something, half-burying his face in the pillow. 

Jason stayed as still as possible. His heartbeats echoed in his ears.

The hand on his arm drifted up - though flailing might have been a more accurate description. It came to rest on Jason’s face with all the accuracy of a sleeping ex-Jedi; which is to say not very much at all, but likely more than it would have been without the subconscious aid of the Force. A thumb traced his lip before trailing off directionless onto Jason’s cheek. 

“- im,” Dick said, which was surprisingly unhelpful in Jason’s attempt to figure out what in the Sith hells he was dreaming about. Not that he could do much thinking, per se, when he was lying this close to Dick. 

Jason probably had about a minute to contemplate what Dick had mumbled before he rolled closer, coming to rest against the length of Jason’s body.

Dick leaned into him, all but burying his face in the juncture of Jason’s neck and shoulder. He hummed with something like contentment, like longing.

Something in Jason’s chest felt like it was exploding. It was _terrifying_. But he didn’t have time to contemplate that before Dick rolled back, inhaled sharply, and - 

And he opened his eyes.

His pupils seemed to almost overtake his irises, only a thin line of blue being visible. It was difficult to tell _where_ he was looking, as unfocused as he seemed. 

He opened his mouth and then closed it, furrowing his brow.

“Dick?” Jason asked, an edge of panic in his voice. “Are you… awake?”

“Jason?” he slurred groggily. The hand on Jason’s arm tightened to the point of pain. “What’s… what’s wrong?” His voice sounded like gravel on rough-hewn stone. Every word looked like it was a battle.

“You’re fine,” Jason said, quickly. “You’re safe.”

“... where is he?”

Jason opened his mouth, then closed it. What?

“Where is _who?_ ” he asked. 

Dick looked off to the side, somewhere behind him. There was nothing there but the wall. 

“I didn’t know,” he said. “I didn’t... know.”

He looked back at Jason. His eyes were turning glassy once more as sleep seemed to try and drag him under.

“Dick,” Jason said, more forcefully this time. “I don’t understand. What didn’t you know? Who are you talking about?”

“He’s… close,” Dick mumbled.

“Dick?” Jason all but yelled. “Dick! Who’s close? Stay with me, damnit-”

His eyes fell closed. His breath left him in a deep sigh before resuming in the slow, deep breaths of sleep. He rolled over, away from Jason. His hand went with him, releasing its grasp.

Almost the second he let go, Jason sprung up from the bed.

His arm felt as if it was burning where the hand had been a moment earlier. 

He was half-way to hitting the ship’s intercom when Cass appeared in the doorway, almost out of nowhere. 

Jason hadn’t thought he’d been yelling that loud.

She didn’t sign anything, just jerked her chin to the open door, indicating that Jason should get the fuck out of dodge and let her work. 

Part of him resented that. _He_ was the one who had formal training in the use of the Force, and _he_ should be the one making sure that Dick was okay… but he guessed that that was just what he got for bailing on all that Jedi bullshit and pushing the Force as far out of his mind as possible ever since.

You can’t slam hydraulic doors, but Jason wished he could have as it closed behind him, cutting him off from Dick. 

He wanted to go to their makeshift workout room and lift until he couldn’t feel his own body. He wanted to leave the ship and destroy something in the forest outside. He wanted to take a goddamn nap, but if the last few nights had been any indication, that wouldn’t even be remotely possible with the sheer strength of Dick’s Force bullshit giving him the worst migraine he’d had in recent memory. 

Instead, he kept walking. His footsteps echoed in the hall as he trudged his way to the pilot’s chair. Auxiliary power meant that the bare minimum of lights shone from within the console, but that was just fine as far as the ache in his head was concerned. 

It felt like the air was pulsing around him. It seemed to carry the vaguest edge of something cold and sharp, even though he knew that the ship’s air quality was highly regulated by the life support system. He hadn’t felt anything like this since Coruscant, back before everything went to shit.

Jason was resolutely not thinking about the implications of that.

Sinking into the chair, he propped his feet up on the console, leaning back as far as he could without tipping backwards. Was it the most comfortable sleeping spot in the galaxy? Fuck no. But he’d slept in worse places, and frankly, he’d take anything over the crew quarters right now. At least here, he could close his eyes and not feel like he just got a blaster shot to the head.

Which of course meant that the moment he’d almost managed to fall asleep, someone had to _ruin_ it by slumping into the chair next to him unnecessarily loudly. 

“You too, huh?” Steph asked. Her voice was rough with lack of sleep. She groaned as she slumped forward on the console, pillowing her head in her arms. 

Jason grunted in response. 

“How much of _that_ ,” she waved her hand in the general direction of Dick’s room. “Is because of Force bullshit and how much of it is because you Jedi types don’t ever address your fuckin’ trauma?”

He cracked an eye open. “Big words comin’ from a woman who takes her issues out on ship parts too busted to be of use anymore.”

“Better than tryin’ to find the solutions to my problems at the bottom of a bottle,” Steph snarked, tilting just enough to look at Jason from behind an arm. “Sorry… _several_ bottles.”

“Fuck off,” he said. The words had less bite than he might have liked. “And no, I’m not one of those ‘Jedi types’ but even if I _was,_ I wouldn’t know _what_ the fuck is causing this.”

Steph scoffed. “Why do I think you’re lying?”

“About the Jedi thing or about not knowing why Dick’s stuck in some sorta coma, but still making too much noise for anyone to sleep?”

“Yes.”

Jason opened the other eye. “You’d have to ask him. I tried, and the best I got was cryptic as all fuck fragments.” 

“He was conscious enough for that?” Steph looked surprised.

“I guess,” he said. “Not that it helped me figure out what in the SSith hells is even happening to him.”

“I’d bet you about a month’s worth of spare rations that it’s related to what happened back on that Republic ship.”

“Ain’t got rations right now.” Jason rolled his eyes. “Besides, you better hope this ain’t got nothing to do with that ship. That was some unnatural fuckin’ shit if I’ve ever seen it, and the last thing we want is all of that crashin’ down on us.”

“Might not have a choice,” Steph muttered.

“Might wanna get to fixing that engine soon then,” he snapped back.

“Oh, fuck you,” she said, making a rude geture at him. 

There was a flash in the corner of Jason’s eye and he ducked out of the way. Something clattered against the far wall, and when it finally came to a rest beneath the console, it looked like some sort of screw.

“You tryin’ to take my eye out?” he snapped.

“I dunno,” Steph said. “An eyepatch might make you look more rugged.” 

He scoffed. “Pretty sure that gimmick’s taken.”

“By who?”

“Some bastard bounty hunter back in the Clone Wars.” Jason shrugged. “Had an eyepatch… and a kinda creepy thing for Dick.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” Jason tilted his head back until he was staring at the ceiling. “Seriously, though. How are those repairs going?”

Steph let out a long, frustrated breath. “Almost done. Maybe. We’ve taken enough trips into town that I’ve gotten most of what we need. Still, the damage is extensive. And it’s the kinda thing that you’d really need more than one person trying to fix on any sort of legitimate ship.”

“Are you calling the _Outlaw_ illegitimate?” Jason asked, though he couldn’t quite keep the smile out of his voice. “Because I’ll have you know that I’m a _perfectly_ legal business man who only deals in the most acceptable of goods within the proper channels of the Empire.”

“Please don’t tell me that you ate one of those hallucinogenic fruits.”

“Hallucinogenic… what? _No._ But also _why do we have hallucinogenic fruits on board?_ ”

“Got bored.” Steph shrugged. “Also, I heard that you can use them to make some sort of alcohol, so. Not gonna pass that up.”

“ _Where_ in the Sith hells did you hear that?”

Steph gave him a look like he was a complete idiot. “In town…?”

“Yeah, but _where_ in town?”

“In the bar. Where else?”

“There’s a bar?”

“Yes??”

Jason threw his hands up. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“Well, I’m telling you now.”

From the back of the ship came a quickly-muffled scream, followed by soft whispering rendered inaudible by distance and multiple layers of durasteel. 

Steph crossed her arms, sighing. “Hey, I’ll do you one better than telling you. I’ll show you.”

“... you wanna travel to town, through that SSith-damned jungle, at _night_ , to go to a _bar?_ ”

“Yep.”

“Okay, I’m in.”

“Just like that?”

“Just like that. Someone’s telling Cass that we’re taking a break though, and it ain’t gonna be me.”

“What makes you think I didn’t clear this with her first?”

“... just about everything, to be honest.”

“Well, fuck you too.”

“No, seriously, how the hell is she okay with this?”

Steph stared at him for a long moment, opening and quickly closing her mouth several times like she was trying to figure out the best way to say something. Eventually she seemed to get frustrated with that, threw her arms out in a wide, sweeping motion, and simply said, “Guns.”

“Guns?”

“You heard me. Ever wonder why there’s a small town out in the middle of fucking nowhere for no apparent reason?”

“Now that you mention it…”

“Solviri is a regular stopping place for gun runners. The good, highly illegal stuff too. It’s supposed to be a through-point only, but if you have enough credits - or, in our case, surplus rare ship parts - they’re willing to let some of them, uh, ‘go missing.’ The jungle’s a crazy place, after all.”

“How the hell did you even find out about this?”

“I’m really good at making friends through screaming matches.”

Jason thought back to the Rodian with the busted up shop. He could easily think of at least ten places where that guy could have stashed that kind of contraband, which meant there were probably twenty less obvious places where he was actually hiding it.

“Yeah, that tracks,” he said. 

“While you’re at it,” Steph said, cocking a hip in a way that was somehow sarcastic. “Do you want to ask me why Cass wants highly illegal guns?”

Jason glared at her, not dignifying that with a response.

“Good. Now, go get ready for a night of drinking, buying illegal weaponry, and possibly having to fight our way out by making a break for it through the jungle.”

“You better not start any unnecessary fights. There’s no way we’re getting off this planet without a working engine.”

“No promises,” Steph said. “But also back at you. How could we go on without our resident dumb muscle?”

“ _Hey - !_ ” Jason shouted, jumping out of his seat.

But Steph was already taking off down the hall to the armory, cackling the entire way.

Some days, Jason really _really_ hated this little fucked up family they’d put together.

* * *

Rain fell in heavy sheets, turning the ground to a sea of mud. 

Piles of scrap that had once been droids lay scattered around them, the rain hissing as it made contact with the glowing slag created by lightsaber strikes. Steam rose up from the battlefield turned graveyard. It combined with the rain to reduce visibility - so much so that it was easy to pretend that they were alone for this.

Of course, it was just a fiction that Dick preferred.

The hood of his robes were pulled over his head to keep him dry, but the ceremony allowed Tim no such protection. 

The mud looked like it had already soaked through his pants where he knelt among the destroyed droids. And without the hood, his hair had quickly been soaked through and plastered against his head. 

Dick pulled one of his lightsabers from his belt, igniting it.

“Please,” Tim said, barely above a whisper. “Don’t do this.”

Dick’s hand tensed on his lightsaber even as his heart felt like it was shattering.

For a painful, fleeting moment he even considered it… but his ship loomed in his peripheral. In the distance, he could sense Damian leaning sulkily against the side of it, glaring straight at them. 

On the other side of the field sat the shuttle and complement of clone troopers that would take Tim to the starship orbiting the planet.

The _Invictus_ , or so the Council had told him. It had just finished repairs from an already-infamous battle with the Sepratists… infamous because it had resulted in the deaths of the ship’s last Jedi commander and the majority of the clone troopers manning it. And yet Tim, as a newly minted Jedi Knight, was to take control of it immediately following the ceremony. 

To have a ship - not to mention a _Venator-class_ ship - repaired that quickly and reassigned to an untried commander was unheard of. But the order had come down from Chancellor Al Ghul himself, and he _had_ always had a… _strong_ interest in Tim’s success.

“You’re ready,” Dick said, quietly so as to be unheard by their distant spectators. “You’ve _been_ ready.”

“Bruce would disagree,” Tim said, still refusing to look up at him.

“Bruce isn’t here,” Dick countered. “And even if he can’t see it, the rest of us _can._ ” 

“That isn’t the problem.” Finally, Tim looked up, staring Dick straight in the eyes before looking pointedly in Damian’s direction. 

“He _needs_ the training, Tim. You’ve seen how powerful he is in the Force… he has to learn to control it.”

“So send him back to his mother!” Tim snapped. “ _She_ certainly seemed to have an adequate enough grasp of the Force for that.”

An understatement. Talia was terrifying on the battlefield.

“You know why that isn’t an option,” Dick said. 

“She claims she’s reformed.”

“No one _reforms_ from being that deep in the dark side… not really. Besides, it was Bruce’s last request that he be trained.”

“You say that like he’s dead.”

“He _is -_ ”

“ _Fine_ ,” Tim cut him off. He looked at the star destroyer’s shuttle, and something seemed to harden in his expression. “If I have to do this, then just get it over with.”

The flatness of his voice was like a knife tearing through Dick’s resolve. 

But still, he had a duty.

“In the Council’s absence,” he said, slipping into a more formal, authoritative tone. “It falls to the Master to speak in their stead,” Dick said, only wavering slightly as the formal words of the rarely used procedure resurfaced in his head. “And in the Master’s absence, it falls to the next in the lineage.”

Tim winced at the word “absence,” but just barely. It would have been imperceptible if Dick hadn’t known him for so long. 

Rain evaporated on contact with his blade as he brought it forward to hover next to Tim’s head. 

“By the right of the Council and will of the Force, the Order recognizes the completion of your training. You have proven yourself several times over, beyond what would have been required by the knighthood trials.”

His blade crossed over Tim’s head, coming to rest above his other shoulder. The blue light was reflected back by the glossy finish of the beads in his Padawan braid, each signifying mastery of another area of study. 

Tim stared at the ground, unblinking. There was no way to know if the wetness of his face was from the rain.

With a fluid movement, Dick’s lightsaber sliced through the braid, severing it at the root. 

It fell to the ground below. Tim made no motion to catch it. 

“I dub thee Jedi,” Dick said, forcing the tremor from his voice. “Rise, Timothy Drake. Hero of the Battle of Felucia. General of the 741st Legion. Knight of the Republic."

His saber snapped back into the hilt with the press of a button. 

Tim stayed there, kneeling.

The rain still fell.

“Tim,” Dick whispered, his voice quiet despite there being no one to overhear. 

Tim closed his eyes.

“ _Tim._ ”

Dick held out a hand, and finally Tim moved, staring at it. 

He didn’t take it as he rose to his feet, meeting Dick’s concerned gaze with an indecipherable expression.

And without a word, he began to walk to the _Invictus’s_ shuttle.

“Wait, Tim!” Dick reached forward, grabbing the freshly dubbed knight by the arm.

He stopped, staring down at Dick’s hand balefully.

“You don’t have to leave _immediately_.”

“The orders were _very_ specific.”

“Can’t you at least wait long enough to say goodbye…?”

Tim turned to face him, eyes narrowed. “To you and your new Padawan?” he scoffed.

“I… yes.” Dick said. His grip tightened. “I know you’re upset, but we should at least _talk_ about it.”

The anger melted out of Tim’s expression. He looked… confused, almost. “You didn’t say that last time.”

Dick blinked. “.... Last time?”

Tim looked around, from the broken droids on the mud-slicked battlefield to the two ships standing sentinel over the carnage. “The first time, I just walked away. You didn’t... stop me.” He seemed distracted, his words trailing off.

“Tim, what are you talking about?”

“We’re not supposed to be here.” All at once, Tim focused, zeroing in on Dick. “You took control. _How_ did you manage to…”

The ground beneath them began to shudder, cracks forming in the distance. More mist spilled out from them, rising higher and thickening until they stood in a void of pure white.

“Where… are we?” Dick asked. The void seemed to swirl around them, and his sense of balance swirled with it. He fell forward, and Tim moved to catch him.

Tim hummed, and Dick felt the sound echoing low in his ear. “You’re just dreaming, Dick. That’s all. Give in to it.”

He felt like he was floating. “Give in to… what?”

“Exactly,” Tim whispered. 

Dick’s eyelids felt unbearably heavy. HIs movements, sluggish.

There was a hand cradling his head, two fingers pressed to his temple. 

“I just need to move things along a little faster...Just a little longer.”

* * *

As far as Jason was concerned, there were three notable things about Solviri. Firstly, the jungle was exceptionally full of things that seemed hell-bent on trying to eat him. Second, the only settlement within walking distance of the ship shut down almost completely after the sun went down, with the technical exception of the only bar in town. That said, the only reason the bar was an exception is because it had more than zero people in it. 

And, as it happened, the third notable thing about Solviri was that the closest bar served the most disgusting bootleg swill that Jason had consumed in nearly a standard decade.

So, of course he ordered five shots of their strongest liquor and made direct eye-contact with the bartender as he downed them all in rapid succession.

“I know I said we were gonna get shitfaced, but you still might want to pace yourself,” Steph said from behind the rim of a glass filled with some sort of luridly purple liquid.

Instead of answering, Jason started trying to determine how long it would take for the bartender to make her way back to him. For the last minute or so, she'd been occupied with a large woman carrying a proportionate gun strapped on her back. They looked like they were going to take a while.

He looked around. At the entrance, the bartender opened the door for a kid who couldn't be more than fifteen galactic standard years old. On the other end of the bar from Jason and Steph, a dark-haired man stared distantly into his drink, running his finger along the rim of his glass. In the back corner, two Twi-Lek had their heads bent together over an impressive array of shots. Jason could hear their slightly drunken giggling coming from their direction.

"Here," Steph said, shoving her drink into Jason's hands. "You look like you need it more than me.

Distressingly purple color or not, free alcohol was free alcohol.

Jason took a sip. Sweetness burst across his tongue right before something hot and spicy kicked him in the back of the throat. He managed to stop himself from slitting it out, but just barely. "What the _fuck_ is that?" he spluttered.

"Local specialty," Steph said. “They make it by fermenting a fruit that grows in the jungle around here.”

"... the hallucinogenic ones?"

"Maybe."

"Riiiiight," Jason took another sip before trying to pass the drink back to Steph.

"Keep it," she said. She reached over the bar and placed a not insignificant pile of credits in the bat, holding eye contact with the bartender.

The bartender nodded, slinging a towel over his shoulder, then headed out from behind the bar to an inconspicuous door. 

With a wink to Jason, Steph got up from her seat and followed him through it.

The door behind the bar opened, and two more people wearing aprons came out: a dark-haired man and a bald woman. They donned aprons, took up the space left by the previous bartender, and began filling orders.

Against his better judgement, Jason took another sip of Steph’s drink. Begrudgingly, he had to admit it wasn’t _that_ bad, despite the bright color making him vaguely queasy. 

Ridiculously enough, there was a small wooden spit balancing on the edge of the drink with several chunks of color-clashing fruit skewered on it. Jason picked up the spit, caught one of the pieces between his teeth, and bit into it. A sharp citrus flavor broke across his tongue, leaving a slight numbness in his wake. Which… was a bit concerning. He gave up on the rest of the fruit and kept to sipping the drink.

Before he knew it, he’d somehow finished the entire thing.

“So you like it?” someone asked. When Jason looked up, he saw the dark-haired bartender leaning against the bar across from him, wiping down a glass.

He had to do a double-take since he hadn’t looked long enough when the replacement bartenders came in. This close, it was impossible to not see that _this_ bartender was the man Jason had run into his first day here.

“... who doesn’t?” he asked. “It’s the local specialty, isn’t it?”

“Doesn’t mean you _have_ to like it,” the man said. “But still, I’m glad that you do.”

Jason shrugged. “I could drink another.”

The man smirked and began to pull various bottles from beneath the counter. What followed was an insane flurry of pouring liquor, shaking glasses, and dicing fruit that resulted in an equally bright concoction being poured into a flared glass. The bartender topped it with another skewer of fruit and pushed it towards Jason. 

“Uh, thanks,” he said, pressing some credits onto the rough wood top of the bar. 

“No problem,” the man said. He pocketed the credits and began cleaning up the workspace he’d used to make the drink.

Jason sipped at his drink as he watched the man work. Somehow, he wasn’t too surprised that when the man finished cleaning, he leaned on the bar across instead of moving on.

“Your friend went around back, right?” He gestured to the seat where Steph had been sitting.

“What’s it to you?” Jason asked.

“Nothing. It’s just that customers who go around back take a while and, well...” He glanced around at the mostly empty bar before looking pointedly at the other bartender. She looked back, nodding with a long-suffering eye-roll. “It’s a slow night. And if you’ve got time, so do I.” 

The man’s eyes raked over him very deliberately, eliminating any ambiguity in his meaning. 

Jason looked from Steph’s abandoned chair to the door she’d disappeared behind. He glanced at his drink. At the bartender looking at him with half-lidded eyes that seemed to almost be glowing like embers. A light pink blush dusted across his face when he noticed Jason looking. 

Jason’s heart sped up almost imperceptibly.

The man leaned forward, his mouth curling into a small, almost shy smile. Blue eyes sparkled with something mischievous, contrasted beautifully by the man’s dark, almost too long hair. 

And with that, Jason was done for. 

* * *

The walls of the passageway stretched forward into darkness, far enough that even the orange glow of the lava wasn’t enough to illuminate where they ended. 

Cautiously, Dick reached out his hand. It was less surprising than it should have been when he found the stone cool to the touch. 

Behind him, a small section of the cliff crumbled, falling down and farther down into the sea of lava far below.

He knew how to take a hint.

Each step echoed against the walls around him, fighting for dominance with the dull roar of the lava behind him. He wouldn’t be surprised if channels of it ran throughout the rock around him; after all, it was what had created this passage in the first place.

The passage, thankfully, led up rather than back down to the planet’s largely molten surface. Eventually, the rough walls of the pyroduct gave way to carved stone which, in turn, gave way to tall, vaulted walls covered in incomprehensible mosaics of monochrome volcanic glass. 

And then, finally, the passageway opened into a massive, circular chamber. 

The basalt walls were lined with alcoves, each holding a towering statue of rippling obsidian. Eyes carved from rubies glistened in the low light, creating the illusion of being watched. Beneath the statues, a thin ledge curved along the walls of the chamber. The inner edge of it ended in a sharp drop of which he couldn’t see the bottom from where he was standing.

On the other side of the chamber, directly across from where he had entered, was a break in the statues.

This, too, was an alcove. But this time, instead of a statue, basalt had been carved into the severe, tapering shape of a raised dias. And, on top of that dias, sat a throne. The smooth obsidian of the arms and back ended in edges that had been chiseled sharp.gave way to sharp, fractured edges. The back of the throne was dominated by an unnaturally large crystal carved into a flat, circular disk that loomed behind the throne’s occupant. He was robed and hooded, sitting in deep shadow only lit only by the light coming up from the pit. 

He was waiting. 

At the edge of the pit closest to Dick, a platform slid forward, seeming to come from beneath the floor he was standing on. Unlike the rock the circular walkway was carved from, this appeared to be made from the same obsidian as the statues and the throne.

There was a moment of hesitation. But there was also no turning back.

The moment he had both feet on it, the platform disconnected from the edge of the pit. The glass that had been touching stone seemed to shatter and pass under the still-formed platform that remained in mid-air, despite not being connected to anything.

As the shards reappeared, they rearranged themselves, slotting into the forward edge of the platform as if they had been there all along. 

He took another step, and more glass broke off to reform in front of him. Another, and the process repeated itself yet again. It was in this way that, before long, he had reached the center of the pit, and a thin sheet of suspended volcanic glass was all that separated him from a long drop into the churning lava below.

Dick swallowed, trying to focus. Not daring to stop.

Despite the latent terror of the situation, he felt himself drawn forward. With each step, the chill in the air increased in spite of the lava’s heat.

The moment he was back on solid rock again, he fell to his knees, shaking.

Only too late did he realize that this meant he was kneeling before the throne and its dark-robed occupant. 

Dick looked up. The light from below pushed through through the shadows of the hood, illuminating Tim’s somber expression. 

He raised a hand and the platform behind Dick shattered once more. But this time, the pieces of it simply fell, consigned to fiery oblivion. 

With that movement, he realized the darkness covering Tim’s wrists were not shadows cast by the wide sleeves of his cloak. Instead, they were a pair of thick manacles. A chain hung from each one, trailing down the side of the dais before disappearing behind the throne.

“This was where he kept me, you know,” Tim said. “In that last year of the war.”

The dark durasteel links shuddered as Tim raised both hands to pull his hood back. In the dim light, his eyes glowed like the embers of a banked fire. His hair was longer than Dick had remembered it, the Padawan braid long gone, removed by his own lightsaber.

Tim reached forward, and Dick felt himself compelled to move closer. 

His feet carried him up the dais’s carved stairs of their own volition. When he was close enough, the hand Tim had extended closed, forming an impatient fist. 

Dick found himself yanked forward. It unbalanced him enough that he had to plant his hands on the arms of the throne just to stay upright. And, with a flush, he realized he was practically leaning over Tim. 

Tim seemed unperturbed. With a finger beneath DIck’s chin, he tipped his face upwards and lightly pulled him closer. This time, there was no compulsion; he found himself drawn forward all the same.

Tim’s next breath shuddered. They were close enough that the exhale that followed ghosted across Dick’s lips.

He leaned forward until he felt his forehead touch Tim’s. This close, he could see the red striations threading through the central gold of Tim’s irises. He wanted to wince back from them, but he found that he couldn’t.

“I don’t… remember this one.” He let his eyes drift closed, trying to think back to if he’d ever been in _this_ specific Sith temple during the war. 

“Because it’s not your memory,” Tim murmured. “...Welcome to Mustafar, six months before the rise of the Empire.”

“Tim,” Dick finally said, breaking the silence. “What is this? What… happened?”

On the arms of the throne, Dick felt one of Tim’s hands come to rest on top of his own, threading their fingers together.

He sighed, deeply, and a wave of cold washed over Dick’s very bones. 

Dick opened his eyes, leaning back. 

Tim’s own eyes were still closed. His mouth had fallen into a small, sad smile. Still, he reached up until his free hand cupped the side of Dick’s face, his thumb tracing his jaw. His eyes blinked open, revealing blazing yellow and blood red rings. “Dick,” he said, softly. “I think you already know.”

With that, Tim darted forward, pressing his lips to Dick’s in a firm, insistent kiss. 

Before it could even register to Dick that he had begun to kiss back, Tim was already pulling away.

“Don’t worry,” he said. “It’s almost over."

The hand on Dick’s face shifted, this time covering his temple. 

“Just hold on a little longer, and we’ll be together soon.”

For a final time, the world shifted.

* * *

It was barely more than a storage closet. Half-empty shelves. A low bench. Just enough space that four Wookies could have probably squeezed inside if they were friendly.

Thankfully, neither Jason nor the bartender were Wookies. And, at the moment, they were _very_ friendly.

The door closed behind them with the sharp slam of their bodies crashing into it from the inside. Jason had the man against the door, one hand braced beside his head and the other gripped around the jut of his hip, squeezing slightly. 

The man encouraged it. He arched his back, pushing his shoulders into the door as his hips moved forward, flush with Jason. 

Even through the leather, Jason could feel well-toned thighs working against him as the man undulated his hips. He laughed beneath his breath; he could appreciate someone who got straight to the point. And, without any reservations, he gave into it, finding himself shifting closer with each half-aborted thrust, drawn in by a desperate search for friction. 

Their lips crashed together in a hot, wet slide. The man’s tongue was barely tracing Jason’s lower lip before he was moaning at the feeling of it, his mouth falling open to grant the man entry without even the pretense of resistance. He could _feel_ the man’s smirk. Whatever part of his brain was still rational wanted to be defensive, to argue that it was _just_ because it had been _way_ too damn long since the last time. A situation which was _not_ helped by the fact that Jason lived in _extremely_ close quarters with a man who he couldn’t decide if he wanted to punch or kiss even on a good day - 

As if he’d heard that thought, the man pressed between Jason and the door redoubled his efforts. His tongue traced the back of Jason’s teeth before settling into a rhythm of slow exploration, fucking into Jason’s mouth at a slow, torturous pace. His hand drifted between them, cupping Jason through his pants and squeezing.

Jason couldn’t have bit back his moan if he wanted to - and there was no way in the Sith hells that he wanted to. 

Before he’d even registered it, his hand moved from the man’s hip to furiously work at the buttons of the man’s shirt. They came apart easily, baring a v of smooth skin and prominent collarbones that he couldn’t stop himself from leaning down and sucking a mark onto. And then another. A trail of them formed, tracing up the side of the man’s neck. For just a moment, he thought he felt a strange warping of the skin beneath his lips, but almost the moment he registered it, the thought slipped from his head. 

Hands pushed him away for just a moment as the other man reached back to grip his shirt collar and pull the obstructing fabric over his head. Though the part of the man’s chest revealed by his open collar had been smooth, the shirt’s removal revealed a number of scars criss-crossing over well-defined abs. Some of them looked almost like plasma burns - but Jason didn’t have time to think on it further before the man had a hand on the back of his head, buried in Jason’s hair. He used the grip to pull him forward and down, giving Jason the perfect opportunity to close his teeth around one of the man’s nipples and roll the bud of it between them. The man moaned, throwing his head back against the door with a loud thump. 

Jason pressed him farther into it, locking his entire mouth around the nipple and sucking until he was sure there would be a notable purple bruise the next morning. He moved to the other nipple as the man hooked a leg over Jason’s hip, pressing his hardness into Jason’s upper thigh. 

He could take a hint. Without breaking contact, he reached down to loop his arms beneath the man’s legs, hoisting him up until he was suspended in the air, trapped between the door and Jason’s body. The man had no complaints, writhing deliciously beneath Jason’s ministrations. 

At this height, Jason’s own quickly-filling cock was only separated from the man’s by an unspeakably frustrating amount of fabric. With Jason’s hands occupied, the man reached down, quickly undoing the ties of his own pants before taking a few moments longer to do the same for Jason. 

Busy as he was, he felt more than saw the way their cocks sprung free before being pressed tightly between their bodies. Jason moaned, burying his face in the man’s neck and biting at the thin skin there. 

For his part, the man reached around Jason’s back and pulled him impossibly closer, using his newfound leverage to thrust up against Jason’s body. 

With each brush of heat from their cocks trapped together between them, Jason found what little control he had left quickly unspooling. He jerked back from the door, pulling the man with him and turning him so that his front was pressed to the door and Jason’s chest was pressed to him. One of Jason’s hands reached forward, wrapping around the man’s cock and jerking him off as the other pulled his pants down just far enough that Jason could grind against him, surrounded by the cleft of the man’s firm ass as it flexed around his cock. 

“There,” the man panted, pointing to a shelf against the back wall. “Oil.” As he said it, the head of Jason’s cock caught against the rim of his hole before continuing its long thrust. 

The room was small enough that the back shelf was still very much within reaching distance. 

Jason all but lunged for it, twisting around so he could fumble with the various cleaners and solvents until he finally found a small bottle of oil that definitely wasn’t there for what it was about to be used for. He turned back around, popping the cap with the same hand that held the bottle. 

The man had shifted to the low, wide bench lining the side wall of the closet. His pants were gone entirely now, and he perched on the bench with one leg thrown out and the other hiked up, his foot almost next to his ass. His spine was bent in a way that had to be uncomfortable, but it gave Jason a fantastic view of the man’s hand moving languidly on his cock and his puckered, twitching hole. 

It was enough to make Jason drop to his knees, placing the bottle to the side of the bench as he used both hands to pull the man closer, fingers digging into his hips. 

The first touch of his lips to the head of the man’s cock had both of them moaning. Jason took it in his mouth, swiping his tongue along the sensitive spot just beneath the crown of it. His lips closed over it, and he hollowed out his cheeks, sucking. 

There was a thump that sounded like the man’s head hitting the wall behind him, and a hand buried itself in Jason’s hair, pulling him down. The other one found the hand Jason was bracing himself with and threaded their fingers together.

He went along with it, following the pull, taking more and more of the man’s cock until he felt the head of it hit the back of his throat. His gag reflex was long gone, but his enjoyment of the man’s surprise was very much here to stay. Jason pulled back as far as he could go before sinking back down, once more taking the man to the root. The muscles in the back of his throat flexed around the cock, sucking and squeezing in turn. 

The man seemed just on the edge of losing it, legs thrown haphazardly over Jason’s shoulders. He pulled at his hair hard enough that it hurt, but as far as Jason was concerned, that just made it better.

Jason’s own fingers were sure to leave bruises with how tight his grip was as he bobbed up and down, working the man’s cock until he was a shivery, panting mess beneath him. Not content with just that, a hand caressed the curve of the man’s ass before finding his entrance. He traced the rim of the man’s entrance slowly; a counterpoint to the fast pace at which he worked the man’s cock. 

He took it as a compliment that the man just barely had time to shout a warning before Jason was clamping down on him, moaning in satisfaction at the feeling of the man’s hot release coating the inside of his throat. 

He swallowed before leaning back to stare at the man with half-lidded eyes. 

The man stared back, looking absolutely wrecked. 

But not so wrecked that Jason burying his face in his ass didn’t make the man give off a small, needy moan that sent Jason’s cock springing to full attention. 

He pressed even closer, his tongue flicking quickly across the man’s entrance before working in slow circles that grew smaller and smaller until his tongue was buried in the man’s ass, working itself deeper and deeper. Thighs squeezed both sides of Jason’s head, urging him on. Not that Jason needed the encouragement. As his tongue plunged in and out in short thrusts, his hand twisted around the shaft of the man’s cock, stroking it back to fullness. 

Absently, he figured that this guy had to have an insanely short refractory period, but the thought left him almost as soon as it arrived.

Jason redoubled his efforts. A finger took the place of his tongue as he sucked a line of dark bruises into the man’s thigh. One finger became two, and two worked together to scissor and stretch the man, going even deeper. The third finger teased the man’s perineum, every now and then flitting up to touch his rim _just_ lightly enough to drive him fucking insane before slowly breaching his entrance and joining the other two. Three fingers in, and Jason began to thrust deep, working the man’s ass as he alternated shot, quick thrusts with slow, long ones. 

As far as he could tell, the man fucking loved it. The cute blush that started on his cheeks had worked its way down to his chest, turning it a beautiful shade of pink. His breaths were labored, and his cock had started leaking again, precum slicking the shaft beneath Jason’s hand. 

Their eyes met, and the man smiled. “Jason,” he said. “ _Fuck me._ ”

Something felt like it was shifting in the back of Jason’s brain. Like there was something wrong with this situation but he couldn't quite figure out what.

His cock, on the other hand, didn’t seem to care.

And neither, apparently, did people hell bent on ruining Jason’s recreational activities.

A loud bang on the door startled them, causing Jason to lose balance and fall flat on his ass.

The man had the good grace not to laugh, though that might have been because he was too busy scrambling for wherever the fuck his pants had ended up. 

Without more warning than that, the door to the storage room _burst_ open, nearly hitting Jason in the head. 

He jumped back quickly. _His_ pants were still mostly on, but his holster was somewhere on the ground. Thankfully (or not), he didn’t actually manage to get his gun out before he realized that the distinctly purple combat boot that had very clearly kicked in the door belonged to none other than Stephanie Brown, inadvertent but very thorough cock blocker.

To Jason’s mind, revenge was well and truly served almost immediately when Steph realized what she was looking at, screamed bloody murder, and slapped both hands over her eyes.

“What the _fuck_ , Jason!?” she shouted, loud enough that the whole bar probably heard.

… not that there was very much of a chance that they _hadn’t_ heard what Jason and the bartender had been up to.

“Well, what did you expect?” Jason shouted back, not even bothering to return his clothing to its original state of being.

“More clothes for one,” Steph groaned.

Jason laughed. 

The man… didn’t. In fact, he didn’t seem to find it very funny at all, and his face was dominated by a small, but severe scowl as he reclaimed his clothes and put them on a bit too quickly.

“You don’t have to -” Jason started.

“Actually,” Steph said. “He does.”

This time she opened her eyes. The man took one look at her and sneered, slinking past her and out of the closet, presumably back towards the bar.

Jason rolled his eyes. “What was _so_ important that you had to interrupt the first good time I’ve had in _literal galactic months?_ ”

“ _Fuck off_ ,” Steph shot back. “... actually, don’t.”

“Well, which is it?”

“ _Shut up!_ How about that? This is fucking important, so you better _fucking_ listen because Cass just commed me and said that Dick’s awake.”

“He’s _what?”_ This time, Jason _was_ putting his clothes back in order. 

The second he was mostly decent, Steph shot towards the door a breakneck speed with Jason right at her heels. They moved so fast that the bar and its patrons were a blur as they rushed through, the details lost to speed and worry.

Details like the bartender leaning out of the closet door to watch their departure, a satisfied smile overtaking his expression as his eyes flashed from blue to red-ringed yellow and back again.


	3. Do or Do Not

Dick woke with a start, breath tripping over itself in a scramble for oxygen. His pulse beat in his ears like a drum, the sound was nearly deafening before it faded into a low, residual hum.

When he opened his eyes, he was surrounded by semi-darkness. He could make out the familiar shapes of his room on the _Outlaw_ , but the colors were reduced to shades of grey. 

He pushed back the blankets that had apparently been piled on top of him. There were more of them than he remembered having in his room or, if he was being honest, at any point in his life.

Coruscant was temperate, and the Temple hadn’t endorsed such frivolities. The _Outlaw_ was similarly temperature controlled, and most of their resources went into keeping the ship in good repair. 

He was busy trying to parse out which crew member had donated which blanket when a small but firm hand landed on his shoulder, causing him to jump halfway out of his clothes.

Dick turned frantically, only to see Cass’ concerned face staring back at him. 

She took her hand off of his shoulder. “Are you okay?” she signed.

“What… happened?” he asked.

Cass tilted her head, narrowing her eyes, and he wondered what was going through her head.

Eventually she signed, and began to explain.

“You started yelling over the comms that we had to leave,” she signed. “Very insistently. Steph and I finished up with the engine room, but when we met back up with Jason on the bridge, you were unconscious. Steph and I put everything on the hoversled, and Jason carried you back.”

“ _Damn,_ ” Dick whispered.

Cass nodded in agreement.

Now that the world had started to come back to him, Dick was starting to regain his sense for the surrounding environment. Wherever they were, the Living Force was strong here. As far as his senses could reach, the area was thick with verdant plantlife. He narrowed his focus to the ship, sensing the vague sparking of a mostly repaired engine, the quiet calmness of barely-lit halls, and the calm, steady presence of Cass sitting next to him.

He narrowed his eyes, focusing first on the ship and then on the area around it. “Cass,where are Jason and Steph?”

“Went into town,” she signed. “Buying weapons.”

“I thought we had weapons?”

Cass shrugged. “Better weapons.”

That… really wasn’t Dick’s specialty. He knew his way around a lightsaber, but anything beyond the very basic operation of guns was lost on him.

The train of thought was interrupted by a low, rumbling sound that, with some embarrassment, Dick realized was coming from his stomach.

“Come on,” Cass signed. “Let’s do something about that.”

She took a moment to send a quick message to Steph, but when she was done, she helped Dick shuffle his way to the ship’s kitchen. More than once, he nearly fell over and had to brace himself on her shoulder.

The nighttime auxiliary lights in the ship’s corridors were enough for them to see their way by, but it was still dim enough that Cass punched the kitchen lights to turn them on. Figuratively, of course - though according to Jason, she’d made her debut on the crew by punching out a utility panel that wasn’t working. Thankfully, Steph had found it amusing enough that she was only sort of angry about having to fix it after.

Cass walked him to the small table they’d shoved into what little spare room the kitchen afforded them, pulling out two chairs. 

Dick took his usual one, sinking down into it. 

Cass stayed standing and made her way to their cold storage locker. She spent a moment or two rummaging around in it before pulling out two jogan fruits, bringing them with her as she moved to claim the second chair. She tossed one of the fruits to Dick, who caught it one-handed.

Its thin purple skin broke easily under Dick’s teeth when he bit into it. He must have been hungrier than he thought, because he had to suppress a slight moan at the taste of it.

“So, uh,” Dick asked once he was about halfway through his fruit. “How long was I out?”

Cass gave him an appraising look.

He shrugged. “I’m guessing about a galactic standard day?”

“Try a galactic standard week.”

“What?”

“One week.” 

“I… just. How?”

Cass raised an eyebrow.

“Okay, stupid question. It’s more… I don’t _feel_ like it’s been a week. Everything kinda hurts, but nothing really feels out of place.”

Cass continued to stare at him, fingers flexing as she seemed to figure out what she wanted to say. “It wasn’t a peaceful sleep,” she signed, eventually. “You spent most of it moving. Speaking. Shouting. We were worried.”

Dick looked away. A cold sort of shame took root in his chest, spreading slowly.

“Do you remember what happened?” she asked.

“Not really. I remember being on the bridge with Jason. An alarm was tripped, and whatever it brought our way… I felt them enter the system.”

“You… felt them?”

Dick nodded. “Through the Force. But at that range, it shouldn’t have been possible unless they had a Force-sensitive on board. And since it apparently _was possible_ … well, the implications are troubling, to say the least.”

“Do you think it was an Inquisitor?” Cass asked.

“Probably,” he said. “But the timing worries me. What are the chances that an Inquisitor would show up when _we_ were scavenging? Not to mention how quickly they responded to the alarm... or that there was an alarm at all on a supposedly depowered ship. Overall, I guess something about it just doesn’t sit right… we were probably lucky to get away.”

“It certainly wasn’t easy.”

“How so?”

“We system hopped a few times. Got lucky on the second to last jump and ended up right next to a pulsar. It scrambled the nav system pretty good, but it probably did the same to whatever tech the Imperials were using to track our jumps. Then, we ended up here.”

“You jumped _blind?_ ”

“Yeah.” Cass shrugged.

“That’s _insane._ ”

“Not if it worked,” Cass signed. “We live to fly another day.”

“... I guess you’re right.”

“I usually am.”

Dick hid a laugh by taking another bite of his fruit. “So… where’d the last jump put us? I’m assuming it’s somewhere planetside since the artificial gravity is off…?”

“The locals call the planet Solviri. It’s out on the edge of Wild Space, so we’re far enough out here that the only people who know about this place are smugglers. Gunrunners, mostly.”

“Thus the ‘better’ weapons.”

Cass nodded. 

Distantly, Dick heard the unlocking of the ship’s door and the whirring of the gangplank extending. Footsteps echoed through the halls. He didn’t need the sudden presence of their Force signatures to know that it was Jason and Steph before they burst into the kitchen. 

Jason hung back by the door, but Steph rushed forward. The moment she reached Dick, she threw her arms around him, enthusiastically crushing him in a hug. 

“You’re back,” she said. 

“I didn’t leave?”

Across the table, Cass gave him a dirty look. At the same time, Steph moved one of her arms to jab him with her elbow.

“Okay, _okay_ ,” Dick relented. “I’m back.”

“Fuck yeah, you are.” She squeezed him harder. “We missed you.”

“Speak for yourself,” Jason muttered.

“I’m sorry,” Steph said, her tone icy. “What was that?” 

Dick couldn’t see the look that she gave him, but from the way Jason stiffened, it was intense.

“Uh.... I missed you too.”

“Much better.” Steph smiled, and it was only a little malicious. 

With that, she released him and stepped over to Cass’ side of the table. 

Cass gave her a lazy salute that turned into a half-hearted rude gesture when Steph swiped her fruit and took a bite out of it. 

“Ugh,” Jason said. “Get a room.”

Steph turned to glare at him. “Like you can talk.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

Steph glanced over at Dick, then back at Jason. 

Dick felt a sudden tension in the air, but before he could zero in on it in the Force, Steph broke it just as quickly.

“... Nothing,” she demurred. “Anyway! It’s been a long night. It’s about time Cass and I went to bed.”

Cass’ expression shifted to something that was halfway between exasperated and amused, but she let Steph take her hand and pull her to her feet all the same. 

Steph’s other hand found Dick’s shoulder. “Seriously though, I’m glad you’re okay.”

“Me too,” Dick said, looking up at her. 

He couldn’t quite interpret Steph’s smile as she unceremoniously marched out of the room with Cass in tow. 

Jason glanced down the hall for a long moment before walking to the table and claiming Cass’ abandoned seat. “So…” he said, trailing off.

Dick looked at him questioningly.

“We were kinda worried that you weren’t gonna wake up there for a minute.”

“More like for a week, or so Cass told me.”

“Yeah, just about.” Jason looked away, staring off into the middle distance. “So, how are you feeling?”

“Fine, for the most part. Pretty exhausted though.”

“... that’s it? Just _fine?_ ”

Dick frowned. “Well, what do you _want_ me to say?”

“Back on the ship, you passed out for no reason after screaming about how we needed to leave. You’ve been unconscious for a week. That doesn’t sound like _fine_ to me.”

“Well, it is,” Dick snapped.

“Look,” Jason sighed. “You don’t need me to tell you that I don’t like to talk about all this Force bullshit.” 

_An understatement_ , Dick thought.

“But there’s no fucking way in any of the Sith hells that what happened back on that ship was normal. And the same goes for you being _fine._ ” 

Dick didn’t answer, waiting for him to get to the point.

Jason exhaled harshly, breath hissing against his teeth. “I’m only going to ask this once. But _what the fuck happened?_ And if you say that you need to meditate on it or that the Force works in mysterious ways, we’re gonna have a fucking problem.”

For a very short moment, the petty side of Dick considered quoting those exact words back at Jason. But eventually, reason prevailed. “Are you going to get mad if I tell you that I don’t really know what happened?”

“Maybe. But I’m _definitely_ gonna be real fuckin’ confused. When we were back on that ship, you seemed _very_ sure that we had to leave _right_ that moment. And then surprise surprise, the damn Imps showed up.” 

By the time he finished, Jason was all but glaring. It was difficult to tell if it was out of anger, concern, or both. 

Dick really, _really_ didn’t want to talk about this right here and now. The parts he could remember were almost sharp in their clarity, but everything else was foggy at best or entirely missing at worst. Not to mention that thinking about it for too long sent spikes of pain tearing through his head, as if the sheer volume of Force energy that had overwhelmed him had also shattered the memory into jagged pieces that hurt to the touch.

He leaned back, crossing his arms. “If I remember correctly, they showed up because of an alarm that _you_ tripped.”

“You think that was _me?_ ”

“It definitely wasn’t _me_ . The light went off on _your_ side of the console. Plus, I was just doing what _you_ told me to do.”

Jason bristled at that. “Yeah, well the information from _your_ informant said that the ship was derelict. It wasn’t supposed to have had power since the end of the _Clone Wars_ . And yet, _somehow_ , we show up and it’s Imp fucking city all of a sudden.”

“What are you implying?”

“Oh, me? Absolutely nothing. Except that maybe we need to consider that your ‘contact’ set us the fuck up.”

“That’s impossible.”

“How would you even know that? How would _we?_ Especially since you won’t give us a fucking _name_. You could be getting information straight from the goddamn Emperor for all we know.”

“Believe me,” Dick growled. “If the Emperor knew where I was, I’d either be dead or tortured until it was _me_ who was coming after the _Outlaw_ .” He narrowed his eyes. “You know that. You know that I have more reason than _anyone_ to hate that Al Ghul bastard. Actually, no. You _should_ know that. But how could you, when you weren’t even _there_ when the Republic fell?”

Jason stood up, pushing back his chair with a loud scrape. He leaned forward, planting his hands on the table. “You wanna know what I fuckin’ know?” His eyes flashed, blue shifting ever so slightly into teal. “I know what it’s like to be _tortured._ I know how it feels to have everything you believe ripped out of you and turned unrecognizable before being stuffed back in. I _know_ how those Sith bastards can play you like a fucking instrument until you’ve got no idea which way is up and which side is light. All you know is pain, and revenge starts to feel fucking _right._ It’s how the Empire made its Inquisitors. It’s how that clown bastard made _me_.”

Dick stood up just as quickly, grabbing the front of Jason’s shirt and pulling him closer. “You had a _choice._ There is _always_ a choice. And you may have worked your way back to the light now, but back then, you _chose_ to betray Bruce when you broke into the Temple and-”

Jason shoved the table to the side, cutting him off as he stepped too close, looming over him. He used the momentum to shove Dick back, all but pinning him against the wall.

“Bruce betrayed me first! I would have followed him to the ends of the fucking galaxy.” Jason pushed him harder. The rivets of the metal wall dug painfully into Dick’s back. “But the minute I didn’t live up to his damn _code_ , that bastard left me to _rot.”_

“He didn’t -”

“Yes he _did_ , Dick. I saved _myself_ from the fucking clown’s trap, _and_ I saved the civilians he’d lured us there with. Do you know how fucking _relieved_ I was to see Bruce after the hell that I went through? I thought he’d be relieved too. I thought he’d be _proud_ of me for defeating a fucking _Sith apprentice_. But no. That bastard took one look at my eyes, pointed his damn lightsaber at me, and told me that if he ever saw me on the Temple grounds again, he’d have the Council arrest me for treason.”

Dick could only stare at Jason blankly, his brain fighting to understand.

“So, yes,” Jason cut him off. “I used the damn dark side. But I saved people. I saved _myself_ , and Bruce still decided to exile me for having the _audacity_ to survive however I could. You wanna talk about _choices_ , Dick? Well, Bruce should have made fucking better ones.”

“Okay, _fine_ ,” Dick snarled, shoving hard enough to unbalance Jason and flip their positions, shoving him against the wall with his forearm digging into Jason’s chest. “But how does _that_ in _any way_ justify breaking into the Jedi Temple and trying to kill Bruce and Tim?”

At Tim’s name, Jason’s face contorted in anger. “How did _Bruce_ justify taking another Padawan when I was still out there? When he did _nothing_ to try and help? The dark side is like a damn drug, Dick. It gets its hooks on you. And when it’s already got you, but no one’s there for you? _That’s_ how darkness fucking festers. I barely even _remember_ trying to kill him; I was being piloted like a fucking meatsuit because the Dark Side found my need for revenge _convenient_.”

“That still doesn't excuse - ”

“No!” Jason shouted. “It doesn’t! But it still fucking happened. I’ve come to terms with my mistakes… why can’t you?”

Dick froze. 

“I don’t even know why I bother asking,” Jason scoffed. “After all, you’re the one still fighting a war that’s been lost for nine years.”

“You’re fighting to bring back the Republic too!” Dick pressed harder into Jason’s chest, feeling a vindictive sort of pleasure at his wince.

“Sure,” Jason sneered. “That’s the cause you _say_ you’re fighting for. But we both know better than that. The Rebellion is just a convenient way for you to try and bring back your precious Jedi Order. But guess what, Dick! It’s not gonna fucking work. All those people you weren’t supposed to be attached to are _dead_ , and no amount of guilt or rage on your part is gonna bring them back.” 

Dick held back a sudden cold burn that was building in the back of his throat. He forced his lungs into an even pace even as they shuddered with the very beginnings of hyperventilation. His emotions roiled inside him, too strong for him to release them into the Force. And in that moment, every recurring negative thought he had boiled over all at once. 

When he struck the wall next to Jason’s head, the Force struck with him. “Don’t you _dare,_ ” he said. The voice came from somewhere low in his chest, reverberating, echoing with the increasing agitation of the Force around them. 

The Force had shielded his hand, but the metal wall warped beneath his fist. 

Dick barely noticed.

“ _You_ don’t get to tell _me_ how to cope after running off to become a bounty hunter!” he snarled. “ _You_ didn’t see the Temple in flames. You didn’t see the sick grin on the Sith Lord’s face as he cut down _younglings_ in front of you. Younglings who you’d mentored in the creche, who you’d taken to find their first kyber crystals. All dead, on the whim of a man who claimed it was the _Jedi_ who were traitors to the Republic”

Jason’s mouth hung open as his response died in his throat. 

Dick blinked, but it didn’t do much to get rid of the wetness pooling in the corners of his eyes. 

The rage left as quickly as it came, leaving in its wake a cold, clammy feeling lurking beneath his skin.

He took one step back, and then another. “Look,” he said, staring anywhere but at Jason. “I’m glad you saved me all those years ago, and I’m glad you let me on your ship. But if I want to spend the rest of my life trying to fix my failures, that’s _none_ of your business. And I know you’re going to help the Rebellion either way, but if you’re not okay with me having been a Jedi and _not disowning that part of my past_ like you do, then feel free to drop me off at the nearest starport.” 

The Force between them hummed with frustration, anger, and the deep sadness that Dick had come to associate with life after the Republic. The edges of it drowned in longing, and it took everything he had to keep himself from examining what that longing was _for_. 

“Dick,” Jason started, his voice softer than he had ever heard it.

“Think about it,” Dick said. “And tell me in the morning. Right now, I need sleep.”

He turned and left the kitchen without another word, ignoring Jason as he tried to call him back. 

The entire way back to his room, he had to fight against the urge to glance behind him, just to see if Jason would follow. 

He got as far as the bedroom door before giving in. Quickly, he glanced back. The hallway was empty, but the air around him resonated with a feeling of instability. The Force here felt fragile, somehow, as if a network of cracks spiderwebbed through it with him at the center. 

Dick sighed, entering his room. The door closing behind him felt definite, in a way. 

His bed was as firm and unyielding as ever, but when he lay down on it, it felt like the softest Sleedaran silk. 

He stared up at the ceiling, letting his thoughts drift. And, as usual, they drifted to the past.

Someone, it seemed, had removed his jacket while he was unconscious. Taking a wild guess, he reached a hand over the side of his bunk and felt around aimlessly. He got lucky, and eventually his fingers met the thick, functional leather of the jacket he’d adopted after discarding his Jedi robes for good.

He pulled it up on top of the bunk, flipping the edge of it inside out. His fingers traced along the seams until he found what he was looking for: the hidden pocket sewn into the lining.

Dick opened it without issue, though it had been some time since he had last done so. With closed eyes, he removed the contents.

Ten breaths, and he could look.

Threaded between his fingers was a long, tightly woven braid of hair tied off at both ends. Its dark color contrasted strongly with the multitude of glossy, colored beads woven into it. It had long since been cleaned of mud, as thoroughly as he had been able to achieve in secret.

He sighed, letting the hand holding the Padawan braid come to rest against his chest. 

After all this time, there was barely any Force signature left on it. But what remained was still a comfort. 

Back before the fall of the Republic, the sort of argument he’d just had with Jason would have kept him seething for hours. Anger was one of his failings, after all, according to the Council. 

But these days, his rage quickly faded to frustration, which in turn became exhaustion. 

And, despite his best efforts, exhaustion inevitably became sleep.  
  


* * *

The kitchen’s doorway loomed wide and dark, echoing with Dick’s absence.

Jason began to pace. First from one side of the kitchen to the other, then up and down the ship’s corridors. He had no direction in mind, but his feet still took him to the place he least wanted to go.

He never had much of a reason to be in the engine room. After all, he knew next to nothing about ship repair. Added to that was the fact that on her first day on the _Outlaw_ ’s crew, Steph had loudly declared the area her domain. Which was fair, considering she was their engineer and general mechanic. 

Steph liked to brag that she knew every inch of the space. 

For the most part, Jason believed that was true.

She took great joy at pointing out the secret storage areas he'd had installed. She'd joke that either he did a horrible job of picking spots to hide smuggled goods, or she was just a better smuggler than he was. 

But still, she knew as well as he did that many of those hiding spots were decoys meant to deter anyone who tried to steal what was already stolen. 

And, most importantly, she hadn't found the one Jason had in mind.

For this compartment, there was no apparent unlocking mechanism. No hidden switch or button. What there _was_ was a hidden lock, deep within the wall. It could only be unlocked by someone who was intimately aware of the location of each moving part… and who could move them from the other side of the wall by memory. And Jason was the only person on the crew with that specific skillset.

The drawer was installed by underground contractors. But for ultimate secrecy, the locking mechanism was of Jason’s own design. 

He knelt before the compartment, placing his hand on the smooth metal. This was always the part he hated… he hadn’t been lying to Dick when he said he didn’t like to talk about the Force. But that was _nothing_ compared to how he felt about actually using it.

Jason encouraged the misconception amongst the crew that he couldn’t use the Force anymore, but a misconception was all that it was. In truth, he was out of practice, but the problem wasn’t that he _couldn’t_ use the Force anymore.

The problem was that these days, using it _fucking hurt._

But he did it anyway, reaching deep within the wall with his mind, moving small parts with the barest twitch of his fingers. 

The sheer amount of focus it took was excruciating, and by the end of it, it felt like someone had shot a blaster straight at Jason’s head. It was a small mercy that he got the lock open on the first try.

It was mostly out of habit that Jason glanced both ways before opening the concealed drawer. Of course, nobody was up at this hour. The only candidate would have been Dick, and well... he didn't see that happening anytime soon. 

Certain of being alone, Jason pressed the now loose panel into the wall, releasing it when he heard a soft click. A small compartment extended from the wall. Most of the inside of it was occupied by a firm foam padding, interrupted only by the carved out cylindrical indent in the center of it. 

And in that indent, was a lightsaber… _his_ lightsaber. 

If the compartment had been hermetically sealed, perhaps the years of tarnish would not have taken hold on the metal casing. Despite this, the air around it still seemed to hum with energy. It radiated cold despite being kept in the warmest part of the ship, and Jason knew from experience that if left uncovered before he went to sleep, it would bring nightmares. Or make the normal ones worse. 

His hands gripped his thighs tight enough to bruise. He tried and failed to suppress the tremor as he pulled the lightsaber from its resting place.

Despite the chill of the air around it, the saber itself felt deceptively normal.

He forced his breath to slow, each inhale growing longer and longer. A stillness came over his mind, wrapping around him like a heavy blanket, and he hoped it would be enough. 

He held the lightsaber before him. A two-handed grip with his thumb brushing the button that would activate the blade. 

With a sharp, painful inhale, he pressed it.

The blade snapped out, extending with a high pitched hum. 

The darkness of the engine room was replaced with a light that haunted Jason's memories. Jagged irregular shadows flickered in and out of existence as the unstable blade fought to maintain its form. 

His grip on the hilt tightened as he grit his teeth. 

It was red. After all this time, it was _still_ red - 

The world around him flashed, and the engine room fell away.

Jason found himself once more in that cold, abandoned warehouse on Theria IV. The Sith apprentice's body laid before him, mangled nearly beyond recognition. His eyes burned. 

"Go," Bruce said, with finality. "And do not return."

Jason’s heart beat faster. He tried to speak, but the world shifted again before he could even make a sound.

This time, he stalked through a thick jungle, chasing his target. The helmet he wore was certainly an upgrade from the last one. It was the same color, of course, but beskar steel was always unparalleled. 

The trees parted. His target saw him. Before they could run more than a few paces, the blade of his lightsaber pierced through their chest. Purple, where once it had been blue. The first hints of jaggedness where its edges had once been smooth. 

Another shift.

The High Council chamber was dark, lit only by Coruscant’s perpetual twilight. 

Jason stood at the room’s center, blade ignited. 

And Bruce... Bruce just sat there. Not in shock, not in relief. But stoic. No emotion managed to escape the iron fortress of his expression. 

And no remorse could be found in the red-ringed yellow of Jason's eyes.

“Bureaucracy suits you, Old Man,” he hissed, leveling his saber at Bruce. “I’m not surprised. You always did excel at pushing your own damn decisions on other people.”

At that, Bruce stood. The dark brown of his robes looked nearly black in the low light. 

As much as Jason had grown, it still felt as if Bruce towered above him.

“My decisions are based in the Code, Jason. I am bound to uphold and enforce it… no matter who has broken their oaths.” He stepped forward from the chair, maintaining eye contact even as he drew his blade. It snapped out, hissing; the yellow blade of a Jedi Sentinel. “Fear. Anger. Hatred. Suffering. These are the tenets of the Sith, forbidden by our Order. Yet, they are emotions you have both indulged in and perpetuated.” 

“You and your damn _code_ ,” Jason hissed. “Do you think I _wanted_ to do what I did? Do you think I wanted to turn into _this?!_ ” His eyes were infernos. He didn’t need to see them to know that the red had nearly overtaken the gold, fueled by his rage.

“You had a choice,” Bruce said. “You _always_ have a choice.”

Jason lunged, striking at Bruce’s chest.

He brought his blade up, deflecting Jason aside before shifting his weight back and his blade with him.

Jason slashed forward, but Bruce was faster, his guard unyielding. Their blades met in a flash of blinding light. He pulled back, throwing his momentum into another powerful swing that Bruce parried. Another strike, another block. A sweeping downwards arc that Bruce nimbly sidestepped. 

Jason slowed to a pause, nearly panting as he held his blade between them. 

“You’re out of practice,” Bruce growled. He looked as if he hadn’t even expended any effort in fighting off Jason’s attacks.

The rage built up, directed toward the man - no, this _monster_ that stood before him. Jason couldn't stand it. The blankness of his expression, the absolute void where empathy should have been. The rigid lines of its code, contrasted by the fluidity of his stance.

A near-monstrous roar ripped its way free from Jason's throat. He switched to a one-handed grip, his other hand drawing his blaster and firing at Bruce’s legs. 

Bruce dodged once more, and in that moment Jason struck.

He slashed again, this time catching Bruce’s arm. The flow of blood was immediately cauterized by the heat of his blade. 

With his saber in one hand and his blaster in the other, Jason shot again. 

Bruce deflected the bolt and the backhanded strike that followed, but it caught him out of position just enough for Jason to duck low, sweeping out a leg and knocking Bruce’s feet out from under him. 

The floor shuddered as Bruce fell to it. 

And, at long last, Jason stood before him. Victorious. Triumphant. Empty.

He raised his blade, red and flickering, the instability of it finally worked through to its core. The bleeding of his kyber crystal was complete.

And Bruce just lay there. He glared but made no effort to bring up his blade in defense. 

Jason barely had time to wonder what he was waiting for before his anger overtook him. Seeing his chance, he snarled, striking downwards at Bruce’s heart - 

Only to be knocked aside by a lightsaber blade blocking his own.

Not Bruce’s. It was yellow green. A little shorter than Jason's own. 

Jason looked up. Wide blue eyes stared back at him, frozen with terror.

"Tim," Bruce said, his voice finally giving into pain. " You can't be here."

The Padawan - _Bruce’s_ Padawan - didn't even look at him. "You were in danger," he said, his voice _dripping_ with concern.

And Jason... Jason broke.

He pulled his lightsaber back and shot with his blaster, this time aimed at the replacement Padawan's blade arm. 

Distracted, the Padawan didn’t even have time to block, and the bolt of energy struck his shoulder. He stumbled back, hissing in pain. 

Jason followed him, swinging his blade almost recklessly.

The Padawan brought his blade up to block - 

Not enough to compensate for his wounded shoulder. Too slow.

Jason’s blade slipped above his guard in a red arc that carved a line across the Padawan’s throat before either of them really registered it. 

Tim’s eyes widened as his hand flew to his neck. 

Jason raised his blade again - 

Only to have it blocked. This time by Bruce.

Without even taking a hand off of the hilt of his saber, Bruce pushed forward with the Force. 

Jason flew backwards, only managing to stay upright by dragging his lightsaber through the floor to slow his momentum.

But Bruce was already coming for him. 

He ducked low, avoiding a swing that would have decapitated him before striking upwards. 

Bruce stepped to the side, dodging it as he swung down at Jason - or where he would have been if he’d been just a moment slower. 

Jason spun, only to be blocked again. Red and yellow blades locked as Bruce pushed down, forcing Jason’s lightsaber lower with his own. He strained against it, screaming as he drew from the deep well of anger within him to strengthen his arms. 

But Bruce pressed the advantage, Force pushing Jason once more. 

He followed, raising his blade high, building momentum and bringing his lightsaber down in a sweeping diagonal arc that Jason just barely parried. 

With a jolt that speared through him like lightning, Jason realized that _this_ was Bruce fighting back.

His blade met Jason’s again and again, gaining ground with each strike. Arcs of yellow light cut through the dimness of the room in a flurry of blows so fast that it was all Jason could do to keep Bruce from taking a limb. 

Before he knew it, his back touched the cold glass of the Council Chamber’s windows. 

Bruce stood ready. This time, it was his blade that pointed straight at the center of Jason’s chest.

"So, is this how it ends, old man?" Jason taunted. He let his head fall sharply to the side, ignoring the pain. He swung his arms out wide, holding his blade out to the side carelessly. "Have you finally got the balls to take a life?" 

Bruce stared at him for a long, tense moment. He narrowed his eyes, glaring, "Never," he said. The growl reverberated through the council chamber. He reached forward, grabbing for the edge of Jason's jacket... and missed.

Jason dodged aside, dragging his saber along the glass. It cut through easily, and Bruce had to jump back to stop himself from crashing through it.

Jason had no such reservations. He brought his boot up and smashed it into the newly created weak point. It shattered around him, little shards catching light as they plummeted into the depths of Coruscant.

“See ya around, Bruce,” he said. 

And suddenly the floor of the Council Chamber was no longer beneath him. He was surrounded on all sides by rushing air, the world blurring around him before snapping back into place.

He was in the engine room. He was safe.

Jason came back to himself no more than a moment after he had first activated the saber. Thankfully, he had the presence of mind to retract the blade before it fell from his hands, clattering on the engine room floor.

He doubled over, braced on his hands and knees as he sucked in air and tried to stop himself from heaving. Gravity felt stronger, though he knew Solviri was actually below the galactic standard. His muscles protested every moment that he kept himself from collapsing face first onto the floor. His head spun, overcome by vertigo. But he fought it, even if his body was blaring warning signals as pushed himself back into a sitting position. 

As quickly as he could, he pulled off his jacket, using it to create a layer between the lightsaber hilt and his hands as he carefully placed it back in its compartment. Even with the barrier, the pull of it called to him. It took everything he had to keep from grasping it and activating the blade once more. 

The moment the compartment closed, sealing the lightsaber away, he stumbled back. He had to catch himself on a nearby console, and minutes passed before he could move without feeling like he would to pass out.

The walk back to his room through the ship’s darkened corridors was less of a walk and more of an embarrassment. 

More than once he had to stop, feeling the bile rising in his throat. Despite knowing that the saber was sealed away on the other side of the ship, the itch under his skin persisted. The only mercies were that the pull lessened with each step he took away from it and that no one was awake to see this. 

It felt like hours had passed when he finally reached the door of his room. He opened it without fanfare, closing and locking it behind him. 

When he finally reached his bed, he collapsed into it. The last of his energy went into throwing his boots halfway across the room and pulling his blankets up around him. 

He breathed deeply, trying to reach something resembling tranquility and hoping that the night would be dreamless.

* * *

Sleep was elusive.

Dick tossed and turned, restlessness etched into every movement. It had to be because he’d been sleeping for an entire _week_ , apparently - or, at least that’s what he told himself.

In truth, he couldn’t stop thinking about the argument. 

Jason’s words echoed in his head, louder than the rote recitation of old mantras from when he was a Jedi.

He sighed, sitting up and swinging his legs over the edge of his bed. 

Jedi. That really was the problem at the heart of it all, wasn’t it?

Even before the Clone Wars, Dick had had his reservations with the Order. More than once, he had been censured for displaying “undue attachment,” and only one of those times was because Bruce walked in on him and Barbara. 

But then the Separatists rose up, the war started, and somehow his reservations mattered less when Dick found himself leading a legion of clone troopers and taking orders from Coruscant’s Senate.

He would be lying if he said he didn’t wish he’d just _thought_ a bit more about what they were doing. In retrospect, it was _so_ obvious. He thought they were making difficult decisions for the good of the galaxy. It wasn’t until it was far too late that they realized they had been manipulated by both sides, and that the galaxy had turned against _them_.

He wondered if Bruce had suspected anything when he went missing in action.

Perhaps Tim was right, and Bruce was still out there. After all, he’d been right about so much else, in the end. Not that Dick realized it until it was far too late. Looking down, he saw that the old Padawan braid was still coiled tightly in his hand. It looked no worse for wear despite him falling asleep with it. He quickly pocketed it again just in case the Force suddenly thought it was too much let him _have a damn momento_..

Dick sighed, scrubbing a hand across his face. He needed to clear his head. 

When he stood, it was something of a surprise that his entire body didn't feel like he'd gone ten rounds in a fight pit with a rancor. Shifting from one foot to the other, he tested it before arching backwards into a full body stretch. His spine popped in at least three places, but there was no pain. 

A stillness came over his mind as he donned his jacket and holstered his lightsabers. They hummed with energy, and part of him was itching to unsheathe them and practice with open blades. But he resisted. It wasn’t often that he felt up to practicing, so if he was going to do this, he was going to do it right.

It wouldn’t exactly be accurate to say that he _snuck_ to the ship’s main door, but he did make an effort to keep quiet. After the week the rest of the crew had had…. well, they deserved the sleep. 

The door opened with a soft _woosh_ of the hydraulics, and Dick stepped down the gangplank, emerging into the clearing surrounding the ship. Just as he suspected, the forest around them was thick and teeming with life. So much of it in fact, that Dick couldn’t sense the nearby village where Jason and Steph had bought weapons. 

Idly, he made his way over to one of the trees, placing a hand on it. The Living Force was strange like that. But it was strong here, and as he let it flow through him, Dick felt his sense of stillness blossom into a kind of peace that had become increasingly elusive since the fall of the Republic. 

With a slight smile, he made his way to a part of the clearing halfway between the forest and the ship. 

It was always good practice to start with the basics. Without drawing his sabers, he began with Shii-Cho; the first form of lightsaber fighting and the first one learned by Padawans. Each movement was slow and measured, emulating the wide, sweeping motions of simplified combat, and he felt a quiet pleasure in the sure, steady movements of the form. From there, he seamlessly shifted into the graceful precision of Makashi, then the efficient defense of Soresu. He continued like this until he had completed six of the seven forms, purposefully omitting the chaotic, furious movements inherent to Juyo. 

By the time he finished the last sequence of katas, the pale beginnings of dawn had just begun to crest over the treetops. And, more importantly, he realized that he’d gained an audience. 

He glanced over at the ship where Cass and Steph were sitting on the hoversled watching intently. Just as intent, but less obvious about it, was Jason, who leaned against the ship with his arms crossed.

“Encore!” Steph yelled, pumping a fist in the air.

Dick couldn’t help but laugh. With a flourish, he pulled out his lightsabers, flipping them through the air before catching and activating them simultaneously in a defensive guard.

Steph whooped with unnecessary volume, and Cass gave him a small smile. 

Jason looked away, and if Dick didn’t know better, he’d think that was a slight blush coloring his cheeks.

First, Dick ran through each of his six chosen forms with activated blades. Then he did it again, faster. Eventually, the movements of his lightsabers were fast enough that they blurred even to his own Force-sensitive vision. And finally, when he had completed the katas a third time, he returned to the fast, leaping movements of Ataru: his favorite form, adapted for the double-bladed Jar’Ki variant. 

With a wink to his audience, he launched himself into a backflip. The Force boosted his jump, carrying him higher as he turned his momentum into a mid-air flip, his lightsabers traveling in glowing arcs. He landed in a lunge, his sabers sweeping out in front of him and to the sides in a dramatic display.

Standing up from the landing, he sheathed his blades.

Steph hopped off of the hoversled and bounced over, unusually cheerful for the early hour. 

Cass followed at a more reserved pace.

“It’s been a while,” Steph said, coming to a stand in front of him. “Looked good though.”

“Thanks,” Dick said, running his hand through the hair at the back of his neck. “I’m a bit out of practice, but the muscle memory doesn't forget.”

“I can see that,” she said. “You should do it again sometime. Not right now though, since I need to borrow that muscle memory of yours.”

Dick raised an eyebrow. 

Just inside of Steph’s peripheral vision, Cass gave her a fond eye roll.

Steph continued like she hadn’t noticed any of this. “I woke up pretty early this morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I decided to do some extra work on the engine. I _think_ we’ll be able to get her space-ready sometime today, but I'm going to need a hand. Preferably two, or four. Six, if you include mine. Actually, forget preferably. I'm commandeering both of you to help me fix the engine." She very purposefully wasn’t looking at Cass as she said this.

Dick looked at Jason. 

Jason looked back.

"Do we have a choice? " Jason asked, jumping back as Steph aimed a quick elbow jab at his side.

"You want off this overgrown rock or not?"

Steph’s elbows were sharp, so that pretty much settled it.

* * *

It was mid-afternoon by the time Jason collapsed into one of the mismatched dining room chairs, groaning as he let his head fall back.

Cass looked up from her pile of guns and cleaning supplies, nodding at him. She didn't object to him taking a part of the table, but she didn't seem happy about it until Dick decided to join them. He took his own chair with slightly more decorum than Jason had, though he looked just as exhausted and grease covered.

"Any updates?" Cass signed.

"We're just about done," Dick said. "Steph says she has to do some final calibrations, and then we've probably got to do a few flight tests, but we're on track to be ready to go sometime before nightfall… ” he looked off, staring at a doubtlessly fascinating part of the ship’s wall.

“You sound less enthusiastic ‘bout that than I woulda expected,” Jason mumbled, flopping forward to brace his head between his hands. 

Dick shrugged. “I guess I’ll miss it a bit. Even though it’s only been less than a day for me, it's nice to be around nature for once. And to not have to deal with... everything else."

"I know what you mean." Cass smiled. "Maybe once we sell off whatever parts are left from the ship, we can take a long vacation in the middle of nowhere."

Dick smiled back. It was a warm smile, but also a bit small. The kind of smile you gave when you wanted something but were too afraid to hope for it. “That'd be nice," he said. "Jason... Any thoughts? Is there anywhere in the galaxy that's nice and isolated that you’ve always wanted to visit?"

"I haven't really thought about it before," Jason replied. "But, probably somewhere with nice beaches. Preferably also somewhere the Empire doesn't even know about."

"You can say that again," Dick said. "There's got to be somewhere out there. I mean, the edges of the Outer Rim are barely mapped, and Wild Space isn't mapped at all. If we stocked up on food and fuel, we could probably disappear out there for a few standard months."

"I like the sound of that," Cass signed.

“Me too,” Jason sighed. “Gotta wait until Steph gives us the go ahead first though." 

Dick stood up, stretching both arms above his head. The slight arc of it drew Jason's eyes to the firm lines his chest and abdomen, and he felt himself quickly having to look away. For just a moment, the movement had reminded him of the bartender. Shame and a vague sense of self-hatred surged beneath his skin. He hadn’t been here when Dick woke up because he was too busy trying to fuck a damn stranger. And he was too caught up on the idea of fucking Dick in a regular, monogamous sort of sense for him to have even really enjoyed it.

In retrospect, Jason would say that it was _that_ particular blend of regret that led him to speak up.

"Of course," Dick said, responding to the statement Jason had already forgotten he’d made. "But until then, I think I'm going to meditate. Force knows I could use the peace of mind."

"Mind if I join you?" Jason asked, suddenly enough that he had to stop his own eyes from growing wide. 

Dick stared at him, blatantly surprised. 

Which was understandable. Jason surprised himself by what had just come out of his mouth.

"Uh, sure," he said. "But since there isn’t really much space around here, I usually meditate in my room. You're welcome to join me if-" his mouth snapped shut, his cheeks darkening. "... If you like."

"As long as you don't mind?" Jason asked.

"No! Of course not."

Out of the corner of his eye, Jason saw Cass ineffectually trying to hide a laugh behind a gun that was probably bigger than she was. He shot her a dirty look, but it just seemed to make her laugh harder.

Dick didn't appear to notice. He smiled, then took off, deeper into the ship.

Jason stuck his tongue out at Cass the moment Dick was out of sight, but he otherwise followed without complaint.

The door was open when he finally caught up, and he stepped inside, closing it behind him. 

Dick was walking around, apparently picking things up off of the floor and either putting them where they originally belonged or just shrugged and placed them where there was space. Once the area was clear, he sunk down into a half-lotus position on the floor, gesturing to the empty space opposite of him.

“That’s not normal,” Jason muttered, side-eying Dick before taking his place, sitting in an infinitely more achievable cross-legged pose.

Dick smirked, switching from a half-lotus to a full lotus.

Jason’s legs hurt just looking at it.

“Anyway,” Dick said. “I wasn’t planning to ask, but I know I won’t be able to focus if I don’t. So, why now?”

“What do you mean?” Jason asked him.

Dick gave him a look that clearly meant _stop playing dumb._

“Whatever.” Jason rolled his eyes. For a moment, he thought about continuing to play dumb. But then he looked at Dick’s face. The concern was almost _tangible_ , and it sent a sharp spike straight through his heart.

“...I guess I just thought about what you said last night,” he said, too quickly. “And I ain’t gonna tell you that I suddenly agree with you about the Order or anything, but you were right about being entitled to your own coping mechanisms. And if for you that means bringing your ulterior motives into the work we do for the Rebellion, then whatever. I’m not gonna drop you at the nearest starport over it.”

He paused, realizing he’d said that all in the same breath. He looked away, unable to bear seeing Dick’s expression.

“But I hope that also means that you ain’t gonna leave over me not agreeing,” he said, slower this time. “We… make a good team. It’s something I never really thought much about back at the Temple, but thinking back? You were one of the only damn good things about that place. And I’d hate to lose y -” Jason coughed, probably unconvincingly. “I’d hate to lose a valuable crewmate.”

When Dick didn’t say anything, he finally found the strength to face him.

And what he saw surprised him.

Dick was smiling in a way that would have inspired Coruscant’s poets to gaudy metaphor. Despite their nine years on the _Outlaw_ , Jason hadn’t seen him smile like that since before… everything.

Shifting a bit, Dick reached out a hand, hovering by one of Jason’s own. When Jason didn’t protest, he laid his hand over top of his, palm to palm, then threaded their fingers together. 

Jason felt the back of his neck burning, but he fought the need to look away with everything he had. 

“Jason,” Dick said. “I’d never leave if I had a choice. I hope you know that.”

He didn’t respond, but his hand did close around Dick’s, squeezing slightly.

Dick’s smile grew brighter, somehow... but Jason found himself distracted from it.

There was a shift in the air of sorts - the kind he associated with the Force, back when his connection to it wasn’t painful as all of the Sith hells combined.

He looked at the slight confusion overtaking Dick’s face, then down at their joined hands.

They were just normal hands. And it made no sense that something seemed… familiar?

Jason flashed back. To the closet. The bartender. The decision he’d made while Dick was unconscious. Suddenly, he felt sick. He all but ripped his hand out of Dick’s.

“Jason, what-” Dick cut himself off abruptly. His head tilted slightly, as if listening to a sound just on the edge of earshot, brows furrowing in concentration. His fingers flexed subconsciously as his hand drifted toward one of the lightsaber holsters.

And then, very faintly, Jason heard the distant, whirring noise of a ship speeding through the atmosphere.

The color drained from Dick’s face and his eyes grew wide as he inhaled sharply.

“What the fuck is that?” Jason asked, louder than he meant to.

“Trouble.” Dick jumped to his feet, lunging for the comm button next to his room’s door. “Steph,” he said, the urgency clear in his voice. “We’ve got company.”

“What? _Who?_ ”

“Probably Imperials. At least one Force-sensitive. How close are you to done? Can you get her airborne?”

“These things take _time_.”

“We may not have time… just. Do what you can. I’ll try to stall them.”

“The hell you will!” Steph shouted. “If they _are_ Imps... do you need me to remind you what they do to captured ex-Jedi?”

Dick froze, still pressing the button to talk even as he said nothing.

“Dick…?” Steph asked, an undercurrent of fear in her voice.

“Get her in the air, and we won’t have to worry about it,” he said at last. He sounded sure, but in the way that people often tried to sound when they were scared shitless.

Steph was saying something on the other end of comms, but Dick was already jamming his hand against the panel that opened the door. “Jason,” he said, already halfway into the hall. “Go help Steph.”

“Fuck no,” Jason spat. “I’m _not_ letting you go out there alone.”

Dick stopped, silent as Jason sprang to his feet, and turned to look at him. There was something measured in his eyes. Calculating, even. These weren’t the eyes of the _Outlaw_ ’s exiled pilot. 

They were the eyes of a general.

“Bring your blasters,” Dick said. He turned on the spot, storming towards the ship’s main entrance.

Jason rolled his eyes at the assumption that he ever _didn’t_ have his blasters, but he ran to catch up with him all the same. 

They passed Cass on the way out. Steph must have told her what was happening, since she had an overlarge gun slung over her shoulder and another in her hands. She was running at breakneck speed to the ship’s cockpit. She paused only a moment, but that was all she needed to give the two of them a devastatingly reproachful glare. 

Dick nodded to her, but didn’t stop or otherwise acknowledge her disapproval. 

Instead, he went straight up to the door, hitting the button to manually open it. The gangplank began to descend, but he started walking down it before it even hit the ground outside.

Jason followed his lead. 

Outside the ship, the roar of engines was deafening. 

And he could see why.

Above the treetops, framed by the setting sun, a ship was rapidly descending into the clearing. It was a ship that had clearly been designed for space combat, modified with shielding and landing gear that would let it enter a planet’s atmosphere and act as a drop ship. It was small for a space-faring vessel, but it outsized the _Outlaw_ without even trying.

As it descended, a wide door on the side of it began to open, revealing three dark figures heavily contrasted by the wall of bright white stormtrooper armor directly behind them. The central figure appeared to be a man in a dark, overly dramatic cloak. He was flanked on either side by another man in death trooper armor and a bald woman in the severe black uniform of an Imperial officer. She looked vaguely familiar, but Jason couldn’t put his finger on why.

The death trooper stepped forward, holding what looked like a repelling line in his hand, but the cloaked man reached an arm out, blocking him. The death trooper nodded, stepping back.

Which made space for the man in the center to fucking _jump_ out of the ship. 

It was too far a fall for most species in the galaxy, but he quickly demonstrated why that wouldn’t be an issue. 

Jason could feel the ripples in the Force as the cloaked man pulled the forest’s ambient energy within himself, turning his momentum into an _eerily_ familiar mid-air flip and slowing his descent in time to meet the ground in a three-point landing. 

He stood straight, and at this distance, Jason could make out the pale skin of his lower face, left shadowed but visible by the cloak’s wide hood. 

The man’s mouth drew into a self-assured smirk.

Somehow, despite the shadows cast by the cloak, he could _feel_ the man staring. An uncomfortable, icy feeling began crystalizing beneath Jason’s skin, turning his blood sluggish and cold.

Next to him, Dick’s expression was unyielding. But he could see the tension in his muscles as he fought to hold himself completely still. 

The wind whipped around them as the ship touched down on the far end of the clearing. The death trooper and the Imperial officer disembarked, moving to stand in front of it. The stormtroopers behind them poured out of the ship, coming to stand in a tight formation. 

The _Outlaw_ occupied one side of the clearing and the Imperial dropship dominated the other, creating a narrow stretch of clear land interrupted only by the occasional rock. And, mid-way between them, the cloaked man stood.

Dick began to walk forward to meet him. 

Jason panicked for a brief moment before following.

As they approached, the clearing sunk into silence. Even the stormtroopers - who generally weren’t known for their discipline - stood stock still, not even a whisper amongst them. 

Behind them, Jason heard the soft whirr of the _Outlaw_ ’s engines coming back online.

 _They just had to stall_ , he told himself. _But for how long?_

When they came within earshot, the cloaked man smiled. It wasn’t friendly.

“You’re a difficult man to find,” he said. His voice was measured, as if he were choosing his words carefully. It carried dual undercurrents of frustration and accomplishment.

"Thanks," Dick deadpanned. "I try."

" _You_ certainly do.” The man smirked even wider. “Your friends on the other hand…" 

" _What about them_?" Dick snarled.

"Let's just say that an overabundance of caution is not something they suffer from. Especially this one.” He gestured to Jason without even bothering to look at him. “But I can't blame him. After all, he _did_ lead me straight to you."

"What are you talking about?" Jason asked, growing confusion in his voice.

The man raised a hand. Jason could swear the entire clearing was holding its breath as he reached for the pin of his cloak and released it.

Black fabric fell away in a cascade of ink, revealing a long red on black jacket, cut in a vaguely Imperial style. His boots were laced high and made little effort to hide the fact there were knives concealed in their sides. The man's hair was just the side of too long, but well cared for. And his face -

“ _You?_ ” Jason’s confusion shattered the quiet in the clearing. 

For the first time, the man turned to look at him. 

“Surprise,” said the man who was unmistakably the bartender who Jason had… well. He sounded amused, but there was a malicious edge to it. “You really should be more careful who you sleep with, Jason.”

Jason narrowed his eyes. "I never told you my name,” he hissed.

“And you didn’t need to,” the man said. “I admit, I was a _bit_ surprised that you didn’t remember me. But you were, after all, _very_ deep in the Dark Side at the time.”

The man reached for the high collar of his jacket. 

Next to him, Dick’s hand gripped Jason’s arm hard enough that he could feel the bruises beginning to form. 

With a finger, the not-bartender pulled away his collar. Beneath, the skin was marred by a long, straight burn mark. The sort left behind by a lightsaber wound that had healed poorly.

Something shifted in Jason’s mind, like a fog lifting. 

He’d _thought_ he’d felt something strange on the man’s neck. But the knowledge of it had slipped away before he could really pay attention.

Absently, Jason noted that the man’s neck was still covered in the marks he had left there. His face flushed, and he quickly glanced to Dick to see his reaction.

But there was no reaction. In that moment, Dick could have been a statue that had been carved into an eternal pose of abject horror.

Jason looked back at the man. 

The smirk had begun to fade, morphing into something far more serious.

“Eleven years ago,” the man said, addressing Jason directly. “I tried to stop you from murdering a man. And, for my trouble, you gave me this scar.” The man let his collar go, concealing the scar as he reached within his jacket, pulling out the extended hilt of a dual-bladed lightsaber. “Believe me,” he said, the smirk completely gone from his face. “I no longer hold any such reservations about witnessing death… or about causing it.”

Jason’s mind was racing, splintering as he tried to fit the jagged half-memories of his past to the razor sharp edges of _right now_. 

But, in the end, it was Dick who made the final leap for him.

His hand released Jason’s arm, and the force of his grip had been such that Jason had to regain his balance without it. 

Dick stepped forward, closer to the man. “You died,” he said, his voice raspy and almost too quiet for Jason to hear. 

The man turned to face Dick. His expression shifted. “Not quite,” he said. There was still anger, still hatred burning in red-ringe yellow eyes, but it was tempered by something almost… soft. 

“ _Tim_ ,” Dick said, pleading, though for what, Jason wasn’t sure.

But then it clicked. The lightsaber. The scar. The blue eyes and dark hair - just like all of Bruce’s ex-Padawans. 

_Tim._

“You _survived?”_ Jason asked, probably louder than necessary. “And we almost…” he trailed off, suddenly feeling a bit sick. 

“Do us both a favor and don’t flatter yourself into thinking I enjoyed that,” the man - _Tim_ \- snapped. “You were _convenient_ . An unshielded Force sensitive, practically _bleeding_ with fear and anger… I needed a way to find Dick in the mess of Living Force that is this planet, and you fit the role _perfectly_.” 

Jason bristled, but the cold wash of fear beneath his skin only grew colder. 

Tim seemed to hone in on this. The malice in his voice grew sharper. “That trick with the pulsar was clever, by the way. It probably would have thrown really threw the officers off for a few days. But the Force knows no such limitations, and with your navigation scrambled by that pulsar, I’d bet a significant number of credits that I knew where you had landed before you’d even left the ship. Unfortunately for you, there was only one person on your crew who would have even considered that you were up against someone with farsight… and he was out of commission.”

“Why are you even telling us this?” Jason spat. He wanted nothing more than to grab Dick and make a run for it, even if it meant taking their chances against this fucker. 

“Because,” Tim said. “I may not know what the Emperor has planned for you, but I want you to spend _every_ waking minute of it thinking about how none of this would have happened if you’d been _just_ a bit smarter. There were so many choices made along the way that led to this exact moment, and I want you to regret _all_ of them. In fact, I’m counting on it.”

“ _Tim_ ,” Dick said, cutting through the air like blaster fire.

Jason and Tim turned to look at him, and for a moment Jason thought he saw surprise in Tim’s expression.

“You don’t have to do this,” Dick said. “You don’t have to _be_ this. You _know_ what the Empire is doing is wrong, and that _this_ is wrong…” 

There was something in Dick’s voice that Jason couldn’t quite describe. For just a moment, he thought he sounded like he had before the war. Before Jason went dark…

Dick seemed to have Tim’s full attention in that moment. He stared at him intently… so intently that he didn’t seem to notice the quiet chirp of the communicator in Jason’s ear. 

As surreptitiously as he could, Jason glanced back at the _Outlaw_ … and at Steph and Cass running full tilt towards them, guns in hand. He clamped down on his first instinct - which was to swear very loudly and emphatically, and yell at the two of them for awful fucking timing. 

But then he felt a pull in the Force and he looked back in time to see Tim take the smallest of steps toward Dick.

“ _Come with us_ ,” Dick continued, not seeming to notice their quickly approaching crewmates. “You can help us fight back… and _you_ can fight back.”

“Dick,” Tim said. It was quiet, but there was so much affection in that Jason suddenly felt like he was intruding. “Look at me. You know what this is, and what I’ve become. It’s too late… it has been for a long time.”

“ _No_ ,” Dick pleaded. “Tim, it’s _never_ too late. And it _is_ possible - just look at Jason-”

He cut himself off abruptly. An expression of fear flickered across his face as he realized his mistake.

Cass and Steph were almost there. 

And Tim - 

The smaller stones around Tim started levitating. His eyes _glowed_ with red and molten gold. The hand that wasn’t holding the lightsaber hilt reached up toward his throat in an aborted motion.

“Right,” Tim said. “ _Jason_.”

He turned, his eyes locking onto where Jason had tried to subtly back up a step.

The lightsaber in Tim’s hand ignited. Twin blades extended from it, both the deep red of dying stars. 

“The Emperor wants you alive,” Tim said. “But he didn’t say anything about wanting you _whole_.”

Faster than Jason could track, he leapt forward, spinning mid air until his lower blade was aimed straight for him. He reached for his blaster and -

A flash of blue. 

Dick was suddenly in front of him, his blade having swept up to block Tim’s strike. 

Jason couldn’t see Dick’s expression, but the shout of exertion as he pushed Tim back with the Force sounded like pure _pain._

But damn was it effective. 

The push sent Tim _flying_ too high above the ground to slow his momentum. He very nearly was thrown into the death trooper and the Imperial officer - both of whom had rushed forward to try and catch him.

Distantly, Tim seemed to shake them off… before he started running _directly_ at Jason and Dick. 

“Go,” Dick said. He sounded… calm?

Jason looked at him in confusion. 

Dick looked back at him. There was a flicker in his eyes that started as a small flame but rapidly built into a raging wildfire.

Distantly, Jason became aware of a buzzing in the back of his head. It seemed to increase with the intensity in Dick’s eyes... And in that moment, he understood what was happening. Immediately, he pushed back against it. 

Cass and Steph weren’t so lucky. With juddering steps and pain in their eyes, they began to turn before taking off at breakneck speed back towards the ship.

At the other end of the clearing, the death trooper barked an order. Behind him, the stormtroopers broke formation, charging forward. 

Unless he and Dick started running now, they wouldn’t make it in time. But Dick wasn’t moving. Tim was getting closer. And Jason...

“ _No_ ,” he insisted. “I’m not leaving you here with this _psychopath_.”

Dick’s eyes were pleading, but he wouldn’t budge. 

And then, without warning, Dick reached forward, grabbing Jason’s jacket and pulling him forward.

Before he knew what was happening, Dick’s lips were smashing into his. They were chapped but warm, his breath hot against Jason’s face. His eyes fell closed, and Jason’s followed. A hand threaded through Jason’s hair, holding him close.

He couldn’t have said how long the kiss lasted, because time seemed to melt the moment it started. 

But when he opened his eyes, the Imperial forces were only a bit closer. 

Dick drew back, just a fraction, his half-lidded stare meeting Jason’s. And this close, he could see tears gathering in the corners of his eyes.

“ _Run_ ,” Dick said, the word stilted. “And don’t look back.”

His thoughts were sluggish. The thing moving in Jason’s head latched on quicker than he could counter it. 

His eyes widened. 

Dick’s expression was agony made manifest.

He felt himself take a step back. The hand on the back of his head trailed down his cheek as he moved against his will.

“Don’t do this,” he pleaded.

“I’m sorry,” Dick whispered. His hand lingered on Jason’s face until he was out of reach. The moment they broke contact, he couldn’t hold his tears back anymore, and they began to fall freely down his face. 

It was the last thing Jason saw, because in the next moment he was turning to run. 

And he couldn’t look back. 

  
  


* * *

Dick watched Jason retreat until the last possible moment.

But even as he heard footsteps, he swung back around, blades flashing just in time to catch the deadly whirr of Tim’s double-bladed saber. 

Stormtroopers rushed through the clearing, giving them a wide berth. 

Either they trusted Tim to deal with this on his own, or they were just as terrified of him as Dick was.

He wouldn’t blame them - the look in Tim’s eyes was murderous, brimming with power and rage. 

Behind him, he heard Steph yelling something and the spitfire repetition of Cass’s blaster holding the troopers back.

Tim didn’t give him any more time to think. The hilt of his lightsaber passed between one hand and the other, and back again. His blades flashed around him in a whirl of burning red before ending up in his off hand, extended behind him. He charged forward, using the momentum of his swings to carry him into a Force leap high above Dick’s head. 

Dick brought his blades up, blocking with both of them and turning aside, using Tim’s momentum against him. 

Tim crashed through to Dick’s original position, landing on one foot, and using it to pivot then swipe at Dick’s legs with the bottom half of his saber. 

Dick leaped up and out of the way. 

The reverse swing of Tim’s saber caught him off guard, but he bent backwards mid-air. It passed barely a hand’s width above him, taking the front off of his jacket. 

He landed in a low crouch, circling.

Tim circled opposite of him. He held his saber parallel to the ground in a one-handed grip, his other arm outstretched. 

Vaguely, Dick recognized the vicious focus of Juyo in Tim’s movements. His heart ached at the revelation, but there was no time to mourn. This time, he went on the offensive. His crouch morphed seamlessly into an uppercut, aiming for the hilt of Tim’s lightsaber. 

Anticipating this, Tim ducked back. He spun around, striking with first one and then the other blade of his saber. 

Dick blocked both, one with each saber, before moving into a quick cross-blade block, catching Tim’s lightsaber between both of his.

Tim gritted his teeth, dropping low. The sudden resistance made Dick fall forward, and Tim swung the unblocked half of his saber up to meet him. 

Spinning out of the way, Dick switched to a quick reverse grip as he tried to catch Tim’s back with his off-hand. 

Tim bowed forward, snapping back upright the second the danger passed.

Dick struck out with both blades, but Tim blocked it before shifting into a tight spin that would have taken Dick’s head off had he not leapt into a backflip. He landed on his hands and sabers, bracing both against the ground before springing back and landing upright. 

Tim met this with another lunging slash that Dick needed both blades to stop. This time, he angled to stop Tim from trying to gut him with the lower half of the saber again. 

Barely thinking before he did it, Dick pulled back his blades quickly. 

In the moment that Tim slid forward, Dick had already ducked back, avoiding the following whirling strike that passed right through where his head had just been. 

He blocked the next strike with each of his blades catching one half of Tim’s saber, bringing them face to face. Blue and red combined to cast them both in a flashing purple light as they stared one another down across locked blades.

Tim pulled the Force into him, using it to shove Dick back and down. 

Dick fell back, but as he did his feet came up to brace against Tim’s stomach, throwing him halfway across the clearing with the help of the Force.

Tim spun mid-air, falling into a roll and coming up low to the ground, one hand buried in the grass and the other holding his saber out to the side. 

In that moment, Dick found that now his back was to the Imperial dropship and he could see the _Outlaw_.

There wasn’t much time.

Cass and Jason alternated ducking out from behind the doorway and taking potshots at the advancing troopers. Someone - Steph, Dick assumed - was on the ship’s guns, a barrage of lasers holding back the tide of white armor.

“Go!” Dick shouted to them, forcing his voice as loud as it would go.

The word was steeped in Force suggestion. Even at this distance, he saw them fighting it. 

Dick released one of his sabers, letting it fall to the ground as he stretched out his hand toward them, using it as a focus.

“ _Leave,_ ” he said, directing every last bit of mental energy he had into the command. 

Jason and Cass didn’t duck back out of the ship’s entrance this time, and the door snapped shut behind them. The ship’s blasters stopped firing and the engines engaged. 

The takeoff sent a shockwave through the approaching stormtroopers, knocking down the first few rows of them. 

Dick watched as the ship lifted higher and higher, into the upper atmosphere. The hyperdrive activated before they’d even fully left the planet’s gravity-well, and with a bright flash of light, the ship was suddenly gone. 

Tim, however, was not.

Dick tensed as the red plasma of Tim’s blade nearly brushed his throat. 

“Drop it,” he said, tilting his head in the direction of the saber Dick was still holding.

Closing his eyes, he let it go.

The lightsaber fell to the ground with a soft thud. 

Dick fell with it, his knees hitting the trampled grass of the clearing. 

The blade at his throat followed him.

With the hand that wasn’t holding his blade, Tim called the fallen sabers to him, clipping them onto his belt. “Self-sacrifice,” he commented. “Very noble of you.”

Dick glared pointedly. “It’s what any Jedi would do.”

Tim reached down, cupping the side of his face. 

He couldn’t tell if Tim’s expression was condescending, pitying, or both.

“The Jedi are dead,” Tim said, brushing a thumb against his cheek. “But, for what it's worth... I'm glad you aren't.”

The hand on his face tensed, and Dick felt his consciousness leaving him - exactly the same way it had on the ship in what felt like so long ago. The edges of his vision blurred, and his muscles began going limp. With the last strength he had in him, he glared accusingly at Tim. 

Tim only sighed in response. He deactivated his lightsaber, adding it to his collection, and ducked forward to catch Dick as he fell.

  
Art by [AugustArchon](https://augustarchon.dreamwidth.org/).

  
Art by [Reggie](https://reagy-jay.tumblr.com/).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A huge thank you to AugustArchon and Reggie2Hood for their amazingly mind-blowing artwork! They went above and beyond for this project, so please go show them some love <3
> 
> AugustArchon: https://augustarchon.dreamwidth.org/
> 
> Reggie: https://reagy-jay.tumblr.com/


	4. Epilogue: Reckoning

Jason came back to himself somewhere between Dalchon and Ryloth as the _Outlaw_ limped along the Corellian Run. 

At least, that’s what the ship’s nav said… he had no memory of traveling here.

He pulled his hands off the ship’s haptic interface, staring at them first in confusion and then horror. 

When he spun around, he saw the cockpit was empty. 

Jason stumbled out of the chair, limping his way forward despite the pain in his muscles and the ache in his head. He had to brace a hand against the ship’s wall as he went, but that wouldn’t stop him as he lurched forward past the armory and into the dining room. 

Besides, he’d recently had practice.

When he reached the table they had group meals at, he saw the weapons that Cass had been cleaning earlier lying scattered across the floor. They must have fallen during the ship’s takeoff… or else had been thrown there by Cass herself.

It wasn’t beyond belief.

The second thing Jason saw when he entered the room was Cass, sitting curled up on herself at the head of the table. She’d braced her legs on the edge of the chair and wrapped her arms around them. Dark hair spilled around her shoulders, messy and tangled like she hadn’t fixed it after the fight. He couldn’t make out her expression from where her head was buried between her knees.

Steph sat in a chair next to her - as close as she could get while still staying on the side of the table. Her legs were at haphazard angles and her hands clasped together on the table’s surface. Tears fell sluggishly down her cheeks, but she made no move to wipe them away. 

Jason shuffled forward, eventually collapsing into the chair opposite Steph and next to Cass.

He braced his elbows on the table and hung his head in his hands. 

“I didn’t know he could still do that.” The words were muffled, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. “Or that he _would_.” 

Cass exhaled loudly in what might have been a sigh or a frustrated huff. “Desperation,” she signed. “Never does what we expect it to. And yet…”

“We shouldn’t have just left him there!” Steph interrupted, startling them with the forcefulness of it. “ _Why_ did we-” Her next word was choked out by a loud, shuddering sob. 

Cass leaned over to her, pulling Steph close and letting her bury her face in Cass’s neck. “No choice,” she signed. 

There was a sort of stilted resignation in her movements, but her expression told Jason how deeply hurt she was by that.

“Cass is right,” Jason said. “That fucking _bastard_.”

“You held out the longest,” Cass signed.

“Yeah, and I went under the longest too. How long have you two been here? Three, four hours? We’re _lightyears_ away from Solviri at this point.”

“Doesn’t matter,” Steph said. “We were too far away by the time we woke up. Even if we went back…”

“He’d still be fucking gone,” Jason finished for her. “And we have no damn idea where they took him.” 

“Or the means to break in there even if we did.” Cass glanced around at the guns scattered across the floor.

“Why didn’t you stop him?” Steph asked, her voice quiet. “You used to be a Jedi, didn’t you?”

Jason narrowed his eyes before thinking better of it and doing his best to sand the sharp edges off his response. “It was a long fucking time ago, okay?” he said. “And even back then, I couldn’t have done what Dick just did to us… fuck, I don’t know. He always said that he hated the ethical problems it created, so he didn’t use it even if he _was_ good at it.” He snorted, staring down at his hands once more. “So much for that.”

“How did they even find us?” Steph muttered.

“Some Force bullshit,” Jason responded. “I shoulda killed that Sith bastard when I had the chance.”

Steph and Cass glanced at one another but let that pass without comment.

“So,” Steph asked. “What happens now?”

“Now? We fucking get him back. No matter what.”

Steph and Cass gave him the same incredulous look at the same time. It was more than a little unnerving.

“ _How?_ ” Steph asked. Her tone could have cut kyber crystal.

Silence fell over the room.

None of them made eye contact.

Eventually, Cass glanced between the two of them. Her expression seemed considering, but also conflicted. 

Either way, she had their attention. First, she held one of her arms up at an angle, her hand completely flattened. The other one made a fist with two fingers sticking up. It started behind the angled hand but crossed beneath to end up in front. Then, both her hands straightened with tucked thumbs and descended in two parallel lines. 

Jason narrowed his eyes, wondering if he had missed something important..

Cass sighed, but this time she spelled it out for them. O-R-A-C-L-E.

“Oracle?” Steph asked.

She nodded. “Dick’s contact goes by Oracle,” she signed, repeating her first sequence of hand motions. “I don’t know a method of contacting them directly, but I do know a safehouse that _does_ have a way.”

“No offense,” Jason said, fully expecting the glares that he got for starting a statement that way. “But why the fuck didn’t he mention this to the rest of us?”

Cass looked at the two of them very slowly, as if she thought the reason was obvious and they were just idiots. Which was quite possibly true.

“I don’t drink,” she said eventually, though Jason got the impression that that hadn’t been her first choice of response.

“So,” he said. “Oracle.”

He looked to Cass, then to Steph. Both nodded in agreement.

“Well, why the fuck not?”

It wasn't actually question. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Partway through the fic, there is a mention of Tim being the Hero of the Battle of Felucia. If you want to know how that happened, there is a very loose prequel to this fic here: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11945712
> 
> Throughout writing this, the Tim Drake discord server has been a wonderful source of motivation to finish this thing... even when it ended up being 20k longer than anticipated. An extra empathic shout out should also go to the rest of the mod team and their willingness to listen to me rant about really random things at all hours of the night.
> 
> If you want to say hi or help me scream about bizarre batman/star wars parallels, I'm also vellaphoria on discord and on tumblr! :D


End file.
